The NCAA basketball tournament is looking to shake things up, as they're looking to make it a 76-team event, and adding a sprinkle in the opening round, which will start during the 2026-27 season, according to On3's Ross Dellenger.
Eight games are supposed to be added to the First Four, that's played on Tuesday and Wednesday during the first week of the tournament. That's what they'll call the opening round.
“This new opening round features 24 teams playing in 12 games over the two days, with six games each at two sites (Dayton, the current home of the First Four, plus another likely more basketball-centric Western location). Those involved in the negotiations caution that plenty of this could change through the course of continuing talks with TV partners Warner Bros. Discovery and CBS,” Dellenger wrote.
The reason for the 12 games is that the first round is set at 64 teams. The winners of the opening round games on Tuesday and Wednesday will advance to play the 52 teams in the original bracket, and those games will be played on Thursday and Friday as usual.
For the opening round, it will be the same concept as how to determine the First Four, as the four lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers play each other, and the last four at-large teams in the field play one another.
“In the opening round, the split is expected to remain the same: 12 lower-seeded automatic qualifiers and 12 at-large selections meeting one another,” Dellenger wrote. “However, that could always change during the course of negotiations. Under this 12-and-12 plan, eight additional teams would be extracted from the main bracket, plus the eight new at-large selections derived from expansion.”
The goal for the expansion is so that the bubble teams that are usually left out of the tournament have a chance to compete and advance for an opportunity at a championship.
