March Madness will not be expanding this season. (Rich Graessle/Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The NCAA tournament will be staying at 68 teams — for now.
The NCAA voted not to expand March Madness for the 2025-26 season on Monday, but it will continue to discuss the expansion of the tournament.
Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported in late July that it was unlikely the tournament would be expanded for the upcoming season after NCAA president Charlie Baker said “logistics” were a major concern in such a short timeframe.
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NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt announced in a statement that various NCAA committees would continue discussions around expanding to 72 or 76 teams for future tournaments beyond next season.
“Expanding the tournament fields is no longer being contemplated for the 2026 men’s and women’s basketball championships,” Gavitt said. “However, the committees will continue conversations on whether to recommend expanding to 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2027 championships.”
The NCAA basketball selection committees — responsible, along with the basketball oversight committees, for making any expansion decision — met in early July and committee members learned that expansion would most likely start in 2026-27, sources told Dellenger.
Baker has spoken out in favor of expanding the tournament in the past to grant access to more worthy participants, such as those left on the bubble.
“There are every year some really good teams that don’t get to the tournament for a bunch of reasons,” Baker told Yahoo Sports. “One of the reasons is we have 32 automatic qualifiers (for conference champions). I love that and think it’s great and never want that to change, but that means there’s only 36 slots left for everybody else.
“I don’t buy the idea that some of the teams that currently get left out aren’t good. I think they are. And I think that sucks.”
For more than a year now, college administrators have been exploring adding teams to the 68-team field, a move that likely requires the addition of another “First Four” site.
“The big challenge is the logistical one,” Baker said in July. “The tournament has to start after conference championships are over and the selection (show) happens like two hours after the last championship ends. And (the tournament) has to finish by the Tuesday before the Masters. There’s not a lot of room there.”
