What a 76-team men's NCAA Tournament bracket would have looked like in 2026
March Madness is expanding. For reference, this is what the new field would have looked like this year.
NCAA Tournament expansion is here, and it's raising a lot of questions. Chief among those is how the bracket will look, which affects the teams as well as the fans competing in pools across the country. The 76-team field goes into effect this upcoming season.
It adds eight teams to the field we are familiar with, all of them playing in the Opening Round (which builds off the "play-in games" that we know as the First Four). The Opening Round will feature 24 teams. Half will be the 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers (a.
k. a. teams that won their conference tournaments), which breaks down to eight 16-seed and four 15-seeds.
The other half will be the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams (a. k. a.