What a 76-team men's NCAA Tournament bracket would have looked like in 2026

NCAA Tournament expansion is here, and it's raising a lot of questions. Chief among those is how the bracket will look, which affects the teams as well as the fans competing in pools across the country.

The 76-team field goes into effect this upcoming season. It adds eight teams to the field we are familiar with, all of them playing in the Opening Round (which builds off the "play-in games" that we know as the First Four).

The Opening Round will feature 24 teams. Half will be the 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers (a.k.a. teams that won their conference tournaments), which breaks down to eight 16-seed and four 15-seeds. The other half will be the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams (a.k.a. the last teams the selection committee puts into the field).

Put another way, this means every region's 12- and 16-seeded teams will get to the Round of 64 by winning in the Opening Round. There will also be play-in games to determine two each of the 11-seeds and 15-seeds. Everything from the Round of 64 on is the same as before.

Visualizing the changes helps. Here is how the bracket would have looked if the 76-team field was in effect for the 2026 Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament.

*Highlighted fields denote new Opening Round games.

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The at-large teams added to the field are: 11-seed New Mexico, 11-seed Oklahoma, 11-seed Auburn, 11-seed Indiana, 12-seed San Diego State, 12-seed Cincinnati, 12-seed Tulsa and 12-seed Seton Hall. Automatic qualifiers who held seeds 11-15 move down a seed line.

We'll have to wait for March to see how these changes affect the viewing experience.