It runs east–west in southwest and south central Wisconsin from the Iowa border near Lansing, IA to Oxford.

WIS 82 begins on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River near Lansing, Iowa, on the Black Hawk Bridge.

At De Soto, the highway turns away from the Mississippi River Basin, and heads northeasterly in general.

This ends at the traffic light with Decker Street, where the road turns east, concurrent with WIS 56.

This concurrency ends approximately four miles (6.4 km) east of Viroqua.