Players Era Tournament increasing to 24 teams in two separate brackets in 2026

The biggest regular-season event in college basketball is going back to Las Vegas. 

After initially lofty goals of expanding to a gargantuan 32-team competition for 2026, Players Era organizers have settled on a 24-team mega event featuring separate eight-team and 16-team tournaments in November. 

There’s another change in store for this year: ESPN now owns the broadcast rights to Players Era games. TNT was the rights holder for the first two iterations, an eight-team event in 2024 and 18 teams in 2025. ESPN and Players Era jointly announced their multi-year media rights agreement on Wednesday. 

Among the most prominent teams in the field: Reigning national champion Michigan (which won last year’s Players Era Tournament in historic fashion), 2025 national champion Florida, Gonzaga, Iowa State, Houston, Louisville, Tennessee, St. John’s, Alabama, Miami and Kansas — all of which are ranked in CBS Sports’ offseason Top 25 And 1. The Big 12 will have eight of the 24 teams thanks to a bold joint business venture that Players Era and Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark agreed to in 2025 and extended to 2030. 

For now, the two brackets are titled the “Players Era Eight” and “Players Era Sixteen.” The Eight will be staged the week before Thanksgiving, featuring these teams:

SchoolConference2025-26 recordAuburnSEC22-16FloridaSEC27-8HoustonBig 1230-7KansasBig 1224-11Notre DameACC13-18RutgersBig Ten14-20West VirginiaBig 1221-14UNLVMountain West18-17

The Sixteen bracket will have these 16 play the week of Thanksgiving: 

SchoolConference2025-26 recordAlabamaSEC25-10BaylorBig 1217-17CreightonBig East16-18GonzagaPac-1231-4Iowa StateBig 1229-8Kansas StateBig 1212-20LouisvilleACC24-11MarylandBig Ten12-21MiamiACC26-9MichiganBig Ten37-3OregonBig Ten12-20San Diego StatePac-1222-11St. John’sBig East30-7TCUBig 1223-12TennesseeSEC25-12Texas TechBig 1223-11

PREVIOUSLY: How Players Era upended the nonconference scheduling model in college basketball

Specific matchups, the overall schedule and ticket information will be made public later this month, according to a source. Thirteen of the 24 teams going were in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. The smaller women’s event will return in 2026 as well, per sources, with an announcement on those details coming at a later date.

“College basketball is the hottest and one of the fastest-growing sports properties in the country,” Players Era co-founder Seth Berger said in a statement. “The players have never been better, and record ratings for early-season college basketball reflect that. Led by top programs from multiple conferences across the sport, the teams in our field are stronger than ever.” 

The 2024 Players Era Festival (as it was then dubbed) paid out $1 million to every participating team and awarded an additional $1 million to the champion, Oregon. Last season’s 18-team event was more financially burdened by the mandates from the College Sports Commission, which tracked and arbitrated every NIL deal for players that had to comply with CSC guidelines before being paid. The majority of those NIL payments have gone through, but there are still some schools and players waiting on a few more deals to be cleared by NIL Go, sources said.

For 2026, Players Era will pay some schools more than others to participate. (Kansas, for example, is being paid the most.) The average payout for all 24 schools will be slightly north of $1 million, according to event organizers. In addition to the financial incentives, the Players Era’s increase in teams for 2025, 2026 and beyond has led to negative impact on other nonconference multi-game events, most notably impacting the likes of the Maui Invitational, the Battle 4 Atlantis and the ESPN Events Invitational.