Softball America Bracketology Update Names Stanford, Texas A&M New WCWS Regional Host Favorites

A new No. 1 entered the chat for the third week in a row in Division I NCAA Softball.

The Oklahoma Sooners downed the defending champs Texas Longhorns in Austin, Texas to slide into the top spot upon winning two of three. Additionally, Florida State was swept by Stanford, its first time losing all three contests in an ACC series since 2011. Texas A&M also walked away with three promising triumphs in its sweep over Ole Miss. Each event impacted this week's Softball America Bracketology.

As a reminder, 31 automatic bids from each conference and 33 at-large bids will determine the Field of 64. Each conference tournament winner claims an automatic bid to the NCAA postseason, excluding the WCC, which has yet to add a conference tournament. The regular-season standings will decide which program goes dancing in that case.

The automatic bids are selected based on a combination of current conference standings and RPI in Softball America’s bracketology prediction. The at-large bids are rooted in RPI, wins against the different RPI quadrants, and Strength of Schedule, while factoring in other datasets such as KPI and DSR.

The SEC boosted its total Regional hosting spots up to nine total, followed by the ACC with three, and the Big Ten and Big 12 with a pair each. All of the SEC programs are expected to qualify for the tournament, aside from Kentucky, and Missouri looking to just squeeze by as part of the Last Four In. Softball America is projecting Texas Tech, Duke, Nebraska, and Oklahoma to claim hosting spots and automatic bids into the postseason bracket.

New Postseason Seeding in 2026

This year, the WCWS will now seed 32 teams, mimicking recent changes made to Women's Volleyball and Women's Soccer. These additions will not alter the 16 national seeds, but will help boost the top seeds with "better", well-deserved head-to-head contests.

By using "buckets" (see below) to seed teams, the hope is to prevent league matchups in the Regional tournaments and thus protect the 400-mile geographic proximity parameters.

The Buckets

National Seeds: 1, 2, 3, 4-29, 30, 31, 32

National Seeds: 5, 6, 7, 8-25, 26, 27, 28

National Seeds: 9,10,11,12-21,22, 23, 24

National Seeds: 13,14,15,16-17,18,19, 20

Here are the projected hosts and top two seeds per Regional as predicted by Softball America for the week of April 15.