All Roads Lead to Makerere: The Hill to Become East Africa’s Sporting Capital
In December, the chant will not be from lecture halls, but from the stands. Makerere University, the 104-year-old institution that has educated presidents and scholars, is preparing to educate the region in a different way – through sport.
From December 15th to 20th, 2026, Makerere will host the East African University Games under FEAUS, the Federation of East African University Sports. For six days, the Hill will stop being just a university and become a village – a village of 4,000 to 6,000 athletes, plus coaches, officials, and medical teams from every corner of the East African Community.
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It will be the largest FEAUS Games ever held.
More Than Just Running
This is not your usual inter-university meet. Twenty disciplines will run concurrently across the campus, for men and women.
Athletics, Basketball, Soccer, Rugby 7s, Handball, Volleyball, Hockey, Netball, Swimming, Tennis, Badminton, Table Tennis, Karate, Taekwondo, Woodball, Darts, plus mind sports Chess and Scrabble, and para-sports Goalball and Sitting Volleyball.
That last detail matters. FEAUS could have stuck to the popular sports. Instead it chose to include Goalball and Sitting Volleyball, games designed for athletes with disabilities, and Chess and Scrabble, games of the mind. The message is clear: Makerere is making room for every kind of athlete. Speed, strength and strategy all get a medal.
Home Pressure, Home Pride
For Makerere, hosting means competing under the lights in your own backyard.
The Mak Sharks will be in the university pool where they train every day. The Woodball team, which brought home international honours and bronze at the last FEAUS Games, will play on familiar ground. The Mak Scrabble team, fresh from winning form, will have the word advantage at home. And the Makerere Impis, who battle weekly in the Uganda Rugby Premier League, will finally have the Hill roaring behind them.
That is the privilege. The pressure is that everyone will expect the host to win.
A Bigger Game Off the Pitch
FEAUS was formed for one reason: unity. Before these athletes wear their national jerseys, most wear their university jerseys first. The university track is where the national team is often found.
And for one week, integration will not be discussed in conference rooms. It will happen in hostel corridors, in dining halls, on the bus to the pitch. A Kenyan sprinter sharing a room with a Tanzanian swimmer. A South Sudanese basketballer trading jerseys with a Rwandan handballer. That is the quiet diplomacy FEAUS bets on.
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For Kampala, it is also business. Hotels, boda boda riders, food vendors, broadcasters, alumni flying back for nostalgia – the ripple effect will go beyond the campus gates.
The Work Has Started
Organizing 20 sports at once is not easy. Accommodation, feeding thousands, transport between venues, security, medical standby – it takes more than the Sports Department. The university says every directorate is involved, and hundreds of student volunteers will be mobilized.
Makerere has an edge: a central location, a sprawling campus, and facilities that have already hosted national championships – the pool, the main stadium track, the courts.
The dates also help. Mid-December comes just after the academic year ends, so classes will not be interrupted and athletes can focus purely on competition.
What remains now is the detail – which field hosts what, how ticketing will work, and the full fixture list. That will come in the coming months.
But the headline is already set. After hosting academic summits and cultural festivals for a century, Makerere is about to host the most ambitious sporting event in its history. Come December, East Africa’s university sport will not be in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam or Kigali. It will be on the Hill.
