March Madness expansion: Insider reveals potential timeline for NCAA decision, confirms 76 schools to participate in new format

The NCAA is set to make a major decision in the coming weeks regarding the expansion of March Madness from next season. The NCAA plans to extend the number of teams that will participate in the NCAA Tournament, but won't have more than 76 schools as part of the Big Dance, according to college basketball insider Pete Thamel.

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Sources: The decision on whether or not to expand the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments for 2026 is expected to come in the next few weeks. The expansion would be to no more than 76 schools. The NCAA remains in talks with its media partners.

Per reports, the NCAA has been in talks with its media partners about the potential expansion for a few months. The final decision is yet to be made by NCAA president Charlie Baker.

“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker said at the Big 12 spring meetings in May. “Our goal here is to try to either get to yes or no sometime in the next few months, because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this, if we were to go down this road.”

Baker also confirmed that the expansion would come by the 2025-26 season.

“That would be the goal—to try and do this for next year, which is why the window to actually negotiate it will probably end sometime early summer,” Baker said. "We’ve been talking about 72 and 76. Those have been the numbers the basketball committee’s talked about. It would obviously be one or the other, won’t be more.”

There are suggestions that the men's and women's brackets for the NCAA Tournament from next season will field the same number of teams.

Florida and UConn were likely the last winners of the current March Madness format

UConn Huskies HC Geno Auriemma - Source: Getty

The Florida Gators and UConn Huskies were likely the last winners of the current March Madness format. The expansion will continue to see 31 teams automatically qualify for next season's NCAA Tournament, with the addition of a few more teams.

Todd Golden's Florida beat Houston in the men's national championship game in April as part of what was likely the final 68-team NCAA Tournament format, which has been running since 2011.

Geno Auriemma's UConn beat South Carolina in the women's national championship game earlier this year.