The 2026 American Conference women's basketball tournament was the postseason women's basketball tournament for the American Conference for the 2025âÂÂ26 season. It was held from March 10-14, 2026, at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama for the first time in history. UTSA received the conference's automatic bid to the 2026 NCAA tournament.
This was the first conference tournament under the American Conference name. In July 2025, the conference dropped the word "Athletic" from its name, as a result renaming itself the American Conference.
No. 6 seed UTSA defeated regular season champion Rice 54âÂÂ40 in the championship game, earning them their first conference title in program history and sending them to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2009. They beat No. 3 seed South Florida and No. 2 seed East Carolina on the way to the title, becoming the first team to beat all of the top 3 teams in tournament history.
Only the top ten conference teams qualify to participate in the tournament. Teams will be seeded by conference record. The conference adopted a stepladder format for the tournament, with the top two seeds receiving byes to the semifinals, the third and fourth seeds to the quarterfinals, and so on.
Tiebreakers may be applied as needed to properly seed the teams.
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<nowiki>*</nowiki> denotes overtime period