The NCAA confirmed on Monday, Aug. 4, that the men’s and women’s 2026 NCAA basketball tournaments will remain at 68 teams.

The women’s Final Four will be held at the PHX Arena in Phoenix on April 3 and 5. The men’s Final Four will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

“Expanding the tournament fields is no longer being contemplated for the 2026 men’s and women’s basketball championships,” NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said in a statement. “However, the committees will continue conversations on whether to recommend expanding to 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2027 championships.”

The NCAA considered expansion to a 72- or 76-team bracket in both the men’s and women’s tournaments increased since last spring. But NCAA president Charlie Baker said on July 24 that the biggest challenge for tournament expansion is logistics, namely, to end before The Masters golf tournament starts in April.

“The tournament has to start after the conference championships are over,” Baker said. “And right now Selection Sunday happens like two hours after the last tournament game ends and has to finish by the Tuesday before the Masters. There’s not a lot of room there. Any expansion, we’re going to have to figure out how to put it in and then logistically how to make it work.”

Baker added that putting more teams in tournament brackets could add value, offer more opportunities to teams on the bubble or potentially snubbed on entry selections, and that the NCAA has had “good conversations” with TV partners CBS and Warner Bros. The NCAA’s deal runs through 2032, costing approximately $1.1 billion per year.

The NCAA men’s and women’s hoops tournaments expanded from 64 to 68 teams in 2011. 

“If you have a tournament that’s got 64 or 68 teams in it, you’re going to have a bunch of teams that are probably among what most people would consider to be the best 68 or 70 teams in the country that aren’t going to make the tournament, period,” Baker said in May.