NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

Most recent season or competition: 2024 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament
Sport	College basketball
Founded	1939; 85 years ago (1939)
First season	1939
Organising body	NCAA
No. of teams	68
Country	United States
Most recent champion(s)	UConn Huskies (6th title) (2024)
Most titles	UCLA (11)
TV partner(s)	NCAA March Madness (CBS/TBS/TNT/TruTV) CBS Sports Network (re-airs) Galavisión (Spanish-language coverage)
Streaming partner(s)	Paramount+ Max[1]
Official website	ncaa.com/basketball

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Championships
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the Division I level in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Played mostly during March, the tournament consists of 68 teams and was first conducted in 1939. Known for its upsets of favored teams, it has become one of the biggest annual sporting events in the US.

The 68-team format was adopted in 2011; it had remained largely unchanged since 1985 when it expanded to 64 teams. Before then, the tournament sized varied from as little as 8 to as many as 53. The field was restricted to conference champions until at-large bids were extended in 1975 and teams were not fully seeded until 1979. In 2020, the tournament was cancelled for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic; in the subsequent season, the tournament was contested completely in the state of Indiana as a precaution.

37 different schools have won the tournament to date. UCLA has the most with 11 championships; their coach John Wooden has the most titles of any coach with 10. The University of Kentucky (UK) has eight championships, the University of Connecticut (UConn) and the University of North Carolina have six championships, Duke University and Indiana University have five championships, the University of Kansas (KU) has four championships, and Villanova University has three championships. Seven programs are tied with two national championships, and 23 teams have won the national championship once.

All tournament games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV under the program name NCAA March Madness. With a contract through 2032, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery pay $891 million annually for the broadcast rights. The NCAA distributes revenue to participating teams based on how far they advance, which provides significant funding for college athletics. The tournament has become part of American popular culture through bracket contests that award money and other prizes for correctly predicting the outcomes of the most games. In 2023, Sports Illustrated reported that an estimated 60 to 100 million brackets are filled out each year.