Andy Katz releases first 76-team bracket projections for the 2026-27 men’s season

Andy Katz’s first bracket predictions for the 2026-27 men’s college basketball season are out, and they come with a major twist: the NCAA Tournament will expand to 76 teams starting next year. Katz’s projected bracket, released May 8, 2026, places Duke, Florida, Michigan and Illinois atop the four regions, while using the new Opening Round concept to play out the lowest-seeded games before the tournament flows into the familiar 64-team First Round.

The NCAA’s expanded format is designed to add more games at the front end without changing the core structure of the second weekend onward. The men’s tournament will begin March 16, 2027, and will feature a branded “March Madness Opening Round” made up of 12 games, separate from the Thursday-Friday Round of 64 window. NCAA officials have said the Opening Round will include 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers and 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams from the committee’s overall seed list, with those winners moving into the standard 64-team bracket.

Within Katz’s projection, each region’s No. 16 seed is not a single team, but the winner of an Opening Round matchup. In the East, for example, Duke is the No. 1 seed and would face the winner of an opening game between Merrimack and Southern as the region’s No. 16. In the South, Florida is set as the No. 1 seed and would draw the survivor of Tennessee State versus North Dakota at the No. 16 line. In the Midwest, Michigan’s No. 1 seed would face Montana State or Vermont, while in the West, Illinois’ No. 1 seed is paired with Tennessee State/North Dakota’s opposite-side concept through Katz’s bracket structure by region.

Katz’s snapshot also highlights how the 76-team format changes the “in” games for mid-range seeds. For instance, Katz projects Iowa as an East No. 8 seed, with Auburn in the West as the equivalent No. 9 seed in its region pairing. He also builds in the new Opening Round matchups for the next tier, where seeds in the 12 line cluster into play-in games that can reshape a region’s Round of 32 landscape. In the East projection, the No. 12 line features a matchup between West Virginia and Villanova, while Alabama’s No. 4 seed would open against Harvard or its region partner at the No. 13 line.

The full seed list Katz provided runs from No. 1 through No. 76 and includes automatic qualifiers from a range of conferences, along with at-large bids he believes could land on the lower lines in the expanded field. That mix matters because, under the NCAA’s pairing principles, the committee aims to place teams against the closest opponent on its overall seed list, while using exceptions where necessary, such as to avoid conference rematches in the Opening Round and Round of 64 when possible. Katz’s bracket makes that logic visible by positioning programs such as Harvard, Liberty, and multiple mid-major contenders on the 13-to-16 lines, all of which would begin the postseason earlier in the expanded calendar.

What to watch next is straightforward, even if the format changes. This is an early, way-too-early projection, so the field will depend on regular-season results and the conference tournament path, especially for teams on Katz’s projected 15 and 16 lines. The NCAA’s own materials emphasize that the change adds games at the front of the bracket rather than creating entirely new rounds throughout, meaning the pressure shifts to whoever must survive those first matchups to reach the Round of 64.