2026 Players Era Tournament increasing to 24 teams in two separate brackets with millions in NIL prize money

For now, the two brackets are titled the "Players Era Eight" and "Players Era Sixteen." The Eight will be staged the week before Thanksgiving, featuring these teams:

The Sixteen bracket will have these 16 play the week of Thanksgiving:

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Specific matchups, the overall schedule and ticket information will be made public later this month, according to a source. Thirteen of the 24 teams going were in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. The smaller women's event will return in 2026 as well, per sources, with an announcement on those details coming at a later date.

"College basketball is the hottest and one of the fastest-growing sports properties in the country," Players Era co-founder Seth Berger said in a statement. "The players have never been better, and record ratings for early-season college basketball reflect that. Led by top programs from multiple conferences across the sport, the teams in our field are stronger than ever."

The 2024 Players Era Festival (as it was then dubbed) paid out $1 million to every participating team and awarded an additional $1 million to the champion, Oregon. Last season's 18-team event was more financially burdened by the mandates from the College Sports Commission, which tracked and arbitrated every NIL deal for players that had to comply with CSC guidelines before being paid. The majority of those NIL payments have gone through, but there are still some schools and players waiting on a few more deals to be cleared by NIL Go, sources said.

For 2026, Players Era will pay some schools more than others to participate. (Kansas, for example, is being paid the most.) The average payout for all 24 schools will be slightly north of $1 million, according to event organizers. In addition to the financial incentives, the Players Era's increase in teams for 2025, 2026 and beyond has led to negative impact on other nonconference multi-game events, most notably impacting the likes of the Maui Invitational, the Battle 4 Atlantis and the ESPN Events Invitational.