The NCAA Tournament won't be expanding beyond 68 teams ahead of the 2025-26 season. Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

NCAA Tournament won't expand for 2025-26 season

Originally posted on Gonzaga Bulldogs on SI
By Cole Forsman | Last updated Aug 4, 2025 3:23 PM ET

The men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments won't be expanding ahead of the 2025-26 season, NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt announced Monday.

"Expanding the tournament fields is no longer being contemplated for the 2026 men's and women's basketball championships," 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 idea of growing the tournaments to 72 or 76 teams had been gaining traction heading into the summer, though NCAA president Charlie Baker even admitted last month that the logistics of expanding a tournament within an eight-month time frame would be challenging to pull off.

ESPN's Pete Thamel reported earlier this month that no decisions or recommendations were made regarding tournament expansion during the NCAA men's and women's basketball committee meetings. An eight-team addition would mark the biggest expansion in NCAA Tournament history since 1985.

Gonzaga has qualified for each of the last 26 NCAA Tournaments. During that span, college basketball's uniquely crafted postseason has altered its format only a handful of times.

The 64-team format established ahead of the 1984-85 season was tweaked in 2001 with the arrival of the Mountain West to the Division I ranks, creating another automatic bid and adding one more postseason game to the calendar. The tournament jumped to 68 participants in 2011 to include the First Four round.

Two of the First Four games involve 16 seeds — teams that automatically qualify by winning lower-ranked conferences — while two more involve at-large teams often seeded 11 or 12. If expansion were to happen, it's been speculated that the creation of extra postseason spots would allow for more power conference constituents to have an opportunity to make the tournament.

However, as conference commissioners touted their respective leagues during college football media days in July, tournament expansion didn't take to the forefront like some thought it would. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said the idea was discussed briefly during his league's meetings, though not much action came out of those conversations.