The 2026 NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament will be a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division II college basketball in the United States, the culmination of the 2025âÂÂ26 NCAA Division II men's basketball season.
The tournament will again feature 64 teams, with teams placed into one of eight geographically oriented, eight-team regionals. The first three rounds will be played on campus sites. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be held at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse in Pittsburgh, and the national championship game will be held at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on April 4.
GoldeyâÂÂBeacom, Lake Erie, Western New Mexico, and Young Harris will participate in the tournament for the first time.
A total of 64 bids are available for the tournament: 23 automatic bids (awarded to the champions of the twenty-three Division II conferences) and 41 at-large bids.
The bids are allocated evenly among the eight NCAA-designated regions (Atlantic, Central, East, Midwest, South, South Central, Southeast, and West), each of which contains either two or three of the 23 Division II conferences that sponsor men's basketball. Each region consists of two or three automatic qualifiers (the teams that won their respective conference tournaments) and either five or six at-large bids, awarded regardless of conference affiliation.
Regional play will take place on March 14-15 and 17, except for the West Region, who will play one day earlier for all rounds.
<nowiki>*</nowiki> â Denotes overtime period