How the NCAA March Madness bracket works

The NCAA March Madness bracket is a 64-team, single-elimination tournament split into four regions, with 63 games from the first round to the national championship. In 2027 the field grows from 68 teams to 76, and 24 of them play an Opening Round on March 16 and 17 for the last slots in the main bracket. Selection Sunday is March 14, the first round starts March 18, and the championship game is April 5.

How does the March Madness bracket work?

The bracket is a tree. Every team plays once, and the loser goes home, so a field of 64 always means 63 games: every team but the champion loses exactly once.

• Four regions. The main bracket is four regions of 16 teams each.
• Seeds 1 to 16. Within a region the committee numbers the teams from 1 (strongest) to 16.
• Six rounds. First round, second round, Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, national championship.
• Region winners meet in the Final Four. The four regional champions play two semifinals, and the winners play for the title.

A bracket pool asks you to pick the winner of every game before the first one tips. That is 63 picks, made once, in one sitting.

What changed in 2027?

The NCAA is expanding the men’s and women’s tournaments from 68 teams to 76, starting in 2027. The NCAA’s own rundown of the change is on ncaa.com. On the men’s side:

• 76 teams. There are 32 automatic bids, one for each conference champion, and 44 at-large bids, up from 36.
• A 12-game Opening Round. The 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers and the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams, 24 in all, play on March 16 and 17, in Dayton, Ohio, and Wichita, Kansas.
• The main bracket stays at 64. Opening Round winners take the last slots, so the rest of the tournament runs as it always has.

If you are filling out a bracket, the practical effect is that the last few slots in the bracket are not known until the Opening Round is played. Pools handle that two ways: they wait until the play-in games are settled before the bracket locks, or they skip the Opening Round and score only the 63 main-bracket games.

How are teams seeded and paired?

In each region the first round pairs seed lines so the strongest team plays the weakest:

• 1 v 16: the top seed against the bottom seed.
• 8 v 9: the closest pairing on paper.
• 5 v 12: the line people circle for upsets.
• 4 v 13, 6 v 11, 3 v 14, 7 v 10 and 2 v 15 complete the region.

The pairings are built so the top seeds stay apart for as long as possible. Seeds are the committee’s ranking, not a prediction, and the tournament has a habit of ignoring them. A 16 seed had never beaten a 1 seed until UMBC beat Virginia in 2018, and Fairleigh Dickinson beat Purdue in 2023.

What are the dates for the 2027 tournament?

These dates and sites come from the NCAA’s schedule, as summarised on Wikipedia’s 2027 tournament page. Check the NCAA’s official bracket page before you set a lock time.

Stage	Dates in 2027
Selection Sunday	March 14
Opening Round	March 16 and 17
First round	March 18 and 19
Second round	March 20 and 21
Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight	March 25 to 28
Final Four	April 3, Ford Field, Detroit
National championship	April 5, Ford Field, Detroit

The whole thing takes three weeks, which is why a bracket pool is the easiest office game to run: one sitting to fill it out, then three weeks of watching it play out.

How do you fill out a March Madness bracket?

1. Wait for Selection Sunday. The bracket is announced on March 14. Nothing before that is real.
2. Pick your champion first. The title game decides the most points in most pools, so decide who wins it, then work back to see if their path holds up.
3. Work through each region. Fill in the first round, then the second, and keep going until you have one team per region.
4. Pick the Final Four and the title game. Your four finalists are the four region winners you just picked, so the Final Four takes no extra thinking.
5. Check the lock time. A pool locks at the time its organizer sets, usually the first tip of the first round on March 18. Fill it out before then.

How should you pick a bracket?

There is no formula, but a few ideas hold up:

• Match your picks to your pool. In a pool of ten, a safe bracket with a strong champion can win. In a pool of hundreds, you need something nobody else has, so a less popular champion is a fair swing.
• Be careful with upsets. Every region has a few. Picking them all gives you a bracket that is wrong in the same places as everybody who picked on mascots. Pick the ones you can explain.
• Look at the paths, not the seeds. A 3 seed with a soft path to the Elite Eight can be a better pick than a 2 seed in a harder one.
• Do not over-think the 8 v 9 games. They are close to coin flips, and there are four of them.
• Take the pool’s scoring seriously. If later rounds are worth far more, your champion matters more than your first-round upsets.

How do you play it in a pool?

A bracket pool is the same tournament with a leaderboard. Everyone fills out the same bracket before the first tip, picks lock together, and points follow the real results.

On Fanzava, you set up a hub with your logo and colors and invite people by link. Our team builds the bracket from the tournament’s own draw and records each result, so every score and the leaderboard update on their own. Each correct pick scores one point times the round number, plus 10 for the correct champion, which makes 130 the best possible bracket, and the play-in games do not score. A pool here is a free social game.

Brackets are not on the Free plan. Run one on Starter or above, or buy a one-time Bracket Pass for a single tournament. Want a printed bracket for the break room first? The free bracket maker prints a clean one for any field from 2 to 128 names.

See March Madness bracket pool software for the full flow, or the March Madness bracket challenge for business if you are running it for staff or customers. For the rules every pool should agree before the invite goes out, read our guide to running a March Madness pool.