The 1961 Canadian Football League season is considered to be the eighth season in modern-day Canadian football, although it is officially the fourth Canadian Football League season.

The Western Canada Intercollegiate Rugby Union merged with the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union.

The WIFU changed its name to become the Western Football Conference.

The CFL season schedule was partially interlocked to allow teams of the Eastern Football Conference to play regular season games against the teams of the Western Football Conference. Beginning this season, teams would play opponents in their own conference three times and opponents in the other conference once, meaning the length of the regular season remained unchanged in both conferences (i.e. sixteen games for Western teams and fourteen games for Eastern teams). The format would remain as such until 1974 when the Eastern Conference extended its schedule to sixteen games.

A third consecutive year of interleague exhibition matches were scheduled with teams in the National Football League. As in 1959 and 1960, in both of the two games played, both CFL teams lost (the Toronto Argonauts lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 36–7, on August 2, while the Montreal Alouettes fell to the Chicago Bears, 34–16, on August 5). The Hamilton Tiger-Cats had a better idea for success: challenge the nascent American Football League to a duel. The Tiger-Cats faced off against their cross-border "rivals", the Buffalo Bills, on August 8. The Tiger-Cats defeated the Bills, 38–21, giving the Canadian league its first win over an American team since 1941. The AFL, embarrassed over the loss, declined to play another international game, and with the CFL consistently losing to NFL teams, the CFL ended international competition.

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