March Madness Bracket Expanding to 76 Teams for Men and Women

March Madness is getting madder.

After months of speculation, the NCAA formally announced Thursday that it is expanding the Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments to 76 teams each, up from 68 teams. The change will take effect with the 2026-27 season and introduce an “opening round” in which 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers and the 12 lowest-seeded at-large selections will face off with the winners advancing to the first round of 64 teams.

The men’s tournament will begin next Tuesday, March 16, two days after Selection Sunday. There will be three games on both Tuesday and Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio, the traditional site of the First Four, but now there will also be two days of three games in an additional city that has not yet been announced. The round of 64 will tip off as usual on Thursday and Friday and all other dates for the tournament remain unchanged. The Final Four will be held April 3 and 5 in Detroit.

The women’s Opening Round games will be held Wednesday, March 17 and Thursday, March 18 and be held on the campuses of 12 of the top 16 seeds selected to host. The Final Four will be April 2 and 4 in Columbus, Ohio.

It is the first time the men’s field has expanded since 2011, when it moved from 65 teams to 68 and created the First Four. The women’s field had 64 teams through 2021 before expanding to 68. Twenty-one percent of Division I teams will now have a berth in the respective tournaments, still a much smaller percentage than the playoff fields for MLS (60% of all teams), the NBA (53.3%), WNBA (53.3%), NHL (50%), NWSL (50.%), NFL(43.8%) and MLB (40%).

All men’s games will continue to air on CBS, TNT, TBS and TruTV as part of the $8.8 billion rights deal that goes through 2032. The women’s games will continue to air on the ESPN family of networks.

As part of the expansion, the NCAA is opening up new product categories for sponsorship, including beer, wine, spirits and hard seltzer.

“Expanding the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships is the right decision for the student-athletes and programs that will now have access to the greatest events in college sports,” said Board of Directors Chair Tim Sands, president at Virginia Tech. “As NCAA leaders, we are especially excited to provide additional, highly competitive games for fans who look forward to March Madness every year.”

Expansion History

The men’s NCAA tournament first allowed more than one team from each conference into the field in 1975 when it expanded to 32 teams after having between 22 and 25 teams over the previous two decades. Since then it has grown as follows:

1979: 40 teams
1980: 48 teams
1983: 52 teams
1985: 64 teams
2001: 65 teams
2011: 68 teams

The women’s tournament began in 1982 with 32 teams and increased as follows:

1986: 40 teams
1989: 48 teams
1994: 64 teams
2022: 68 teams

Michigan won the men’s tournament this past season for its first title since 1989, cutting down the nets in Indianapolis. UCLA won the first women’s title in school history in Phoenix.