The NCAA Tournament officially expanded to 76 teams on Thursday, and the first question many people had was a reasonable one: What happens to the bracket?
The answer, for now, is nothing. ESPN is not planning to expand its Tournament Challenge to include the new play-in games, and neither is CBS, according to The Athletic’s Lindsay Schnell. The 76-team format, which was formally approved by both the men’s and women’s selection committees on Thursday and takes effect in 2026-27, adds 24 play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday before the first round. Teams currently on the 9, 10, and 11 seed lines who would have had guaranteed spots in the bracket will now have to earn their way in.
The traditional 64-team bracket for the NCAA Tournament — the one everyone has been filling out since 1985 — stays intact.
“I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal,” ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi told The Athletic. “As long as the main bracket of 64 is preserved for tipoff at noon on Thursday — which is absolutely what’s going to happen — the vast majority of people will simply play along and not care about expansion.”
ESPN’s Tournament Challenge set a record for the fourth consecutive year in 2026, with 26.6 million brackets filled out — up 7% from 24.4 million the year before — peaking at 766 brackets per second before the first round tipped off in March. The bracket is what makes March Madness a cultural event rather than just a basketball tournament, and any format change that puts that experience at risk would be a significant problem. Leaving the 64-team structure untouched is the clearest signal yet that the NCAA understands what it actually has.
Whether the play-in games become must-watch television is a separate question from whether they damage the product people already love. If Lunardi is right, the answer to that second question is no.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.