UFC 328 takes over Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, on May 9, 2026, with a title-fight main event between middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev and former champ and No. 3 contender Sean Strickland. The card also puts UFC Flyweight Champion Joshua Van in the co-main event against No. 3 contender Tatsuro Taira, with the main card set for 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT.
The event is built around a pair of title fights and will stream live on Paramount+, with early prelims scheduled to start at 5 p.m. ET and prelims at 7 p.m. ET. Van enters looking for his first title defense, while Chimaev’s bout serves as his own defense of the belt in a lineup that also includes King Green against Jeremy Stephens, Sean Brady versus Joaquin Buckley at welterweight, and heavyweight action between Alexander Volkov and Waldo Cortes Acosta.
Green’s return carries some of the evening’s sharpest contrast. He was back in the Octagon after a knockout win in February, a quick turnaround that gives the prelims one of the card’s more familiar names. Brady and Buckley add another layer at 170 pounds, where the matchup brings together two ranked contenders with different paths to the same division’s traffic jam. Volkov and Cortes Acosta do the same at heavyweight, where each man enters from the top end of the rankings and a single result can shift the picture fast.
The structure of the night leaves little mystery about what the promotion is selling: two championship bouts at the top, depth underneath, and a live page that is expected to be updated throughout the main card. That makes the first moments of UFC 328 matter almost as much as the final ones. Chimaev is defending against a former champion who knows how to force a hard pace, and Van is trying to make the first defense of his reign look routine against a contender who is 15-0.
The tension in a card like this is that the headline fights may not be the only ones that redraw the map. One clean finish on the undercard can matter just as much for what comes next, especially in divisions where rankings are crowded and the next challenger is usually only one result away. By the end of the night in Newark, the names attached to UFC 328 will not just have filled a schedule. They will have shaped the next set of conversations at middleweight, flyweight, welterweight and heavyweight.
