March Madness tips off with the First Four games on March 17-18 before the first round of the men’s NCAA tournament starts on March 19.
WASHINGTON — March Madness is right around the corner, and we will find out which teams will participate in the 2026 tournament on Selection Sunday, March 15.
The First Four games will start the tournament on Tuesday, March 17, and Wednesday, March 18, in Dayton, Ohio. The tournament will ramp up for the first round on March 19-20, before the second round on March 21-22.
You can click here or below to download a printable men’s tournament bracket to fill out for March Madness 2026. And even though there has never been a perfect March Madness bracket, maybe this is your year?
This downloadable bracket will be updated on Sunday, March 15 once the teams and seeds are released.
What are the odds of a perfect bracket?
According to NCAA.com, the odds of picking a perfect bracket at random — not even counting the play-in games — is 1 chance out of 2 to the 63rd power, which is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or about 1 in 9.2 quintillion (give or take 20 quadrillion or so). According to University of Hawaii researchers, that is more than the number of grains of sand on Earth.
However, NCAA.com also notes that the odds are more like 1 in 120.2 billion, if the person making the bracket takes into account info about which teams are better and tournament history.
In 2025, we saw one of the longer perfect brackets over the past few years. One bracket was perfect through the first 42 games before getting Kentucky vs. Illinois wrong in game 43. That was the longest a bracket had remained perfect since 2019.
In 2024, a perfect bracket lasted through the first 31 games. That bracket lasted until number 8 Utah State beat number 9 TCU.
For a full list of how long brackets have stayed perfect, click here.
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