It’s official: The fields of the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships will increase from 68 teams to 76 starting in 2027, the NCAA announced on Thursday.
The move in part is due to the ongoing growth in the number of Division I basketball teams.
The number of men’s and women’s Division I basketball teams have increased significantly over the years. Since 1985, the number of Division I women’s basketball teams has increased from 277 to 359, while the number of Division I men’s teams has increased from 282 in 1985 to 361.
The women’s basketball championship began in 1982 with 32 teams, before the field increased by eight teams in both 1986 and 1989. Five years later, the field grew to 64, where it remained until 2022 when it went to 68 teams. With this expansion, the women’s tournament will have increased by 12 teams since 2022.
The men’s basketball championship began in 1939 with eight teams. Since then, the field has expanded by at least eight teams on four previous occasions, going from eight teams to 16 in 1951, from 32 to 40 in 1979, 40 to 48 in 1980, and 53 to 64 in 1985. The field remained at 64 teams until 2001, when it increased to 65, before going up to 68 in 2011.
“The expansion is what it is,” Indiana coach Darian DeVries said Thursday morning. “We went from 64 (teams) to 68. Now we’re going from 68 to 76, and people will be on both sides of it, whether they like it or don’t.
“It’s kind of like the portal, everything that we have right now,” DeVries said. “We just roll with what they tell us the rules are.”
The NCAA also released the format of the new bracket on Thursday.
There will be a total of 12 play-in games on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week of the tournament at Dayton and one other unnamed site. The traditional 64-team field will by set ahead of the Thursday games.
The 76-team brackets will feature an automatic qualifier from each conference, along with the best at-large teams selected by the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees. The lowest-seeded 12 automatic qualifiers as seeded by the committees will play in half of the Opening Round games, while the other six games will feature the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams.
All 75 games of the men’s basketball championship will air across TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV. Every game from the women’s basketball championship will air on ESPN networks.
The new bracket format is below:
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