Are there any perfect brackets? Tracking the best remaining schedules for March Madness in 2026 originally appeared on The Sporting News. Click here to add Sports News as your go-to source.
Ironic or not, “This year, I’m going to have a perfect bracket” is a phrase heard many times among college basketball fans. That claim is often disproven within hours of the NCAA tournament starting.
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The same is true for 2026, with more than 96% of perfect brackets eliminated on day one. High-profile upsets — including No. 12 High Point’s stunning comeback against No. 5 Wisconsin — were the main culprits on the opening afternoon. In that thrilling 83-82 game, the Panthers erased an eight-point deficit in the final seven minutes, tying the game on Chase Johnston’s fast-break layup with 11.7 seconds left. The result was a devastating blow to the millions of fans counting on the Badgers to advance, as an estimated 83 percent of entries on major platforms had Wisconsin advancing to the second round.
As the sun sets on the first Thursday of the tournament, only a handful of players are still dreaming of a perfect qualification. From High Point’s historic first-ever tournament victory to No. 9 TCU’s win over No. 8 Ohio State in its opener, the “crazy” was in full effect, proving once again that the 1-in-92,000 odds are as strong as ever.
So, how many parentheses are truly perfect?
Let’s check it out after the first day.
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Is there still a perfect March Madness in 2026?
There are quite a few perfect brackets left from day one.
ESPN
There are 10,754 perfect brackets left in ESPN’s Championship Challenge, out of more than 26 million.
National Collegiate Athletic Association
While the NCAA has not released the raw number of perfect brackets in its bracket challenges, it announced that only 0.04% of brackets remained perfect. The NCAA also said that approximately 14,000 people have remained perfect in all major online tournament challenges.
Yahoo
Yahoo didn’t reveal how many perfect brackets it had on day one, but only 0.1% remained perfect through the first 12 games.
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cbs sports
CBS Sports did not reveal how many brackets remained perfect in its challenge.
History of Seed Disturbance:
16 vs. 1 | 15 vs. 2 | 14 vs. 3 | 13 vs. 4 | 12 vs. 5
What percentage of brackets are still perfect?
Only about 0.04% of brackets are still perfect on day one. On ESPN, more than 26 million brackets had at least one wrong choice on day one, with only 10,754 surviving.
SN Awards: All-American | player of the year | Coach of the Year
Perfect March Madness Odds
If every game were a simple 50/50 coin flip, the perfect odds to fill out March Madness are known to be 1 in 9.2 million. To put that in perspective, you’re statistically more likely to be struck by lightning while winning the Powerball jackpot than you are to win all 63 games through sheer luck.
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Even for those with deep college basketball knowledge who can narrow the odds to roughly 1 in 120 billion, the feat remains one of the most statistically improbable challenges in all of sports. In the history of the tournament, no publicly verified bracket has remained perfect throughout the entire 63 games.
The closest came in 2019, when an Ohio State man correctly predicted the first 49 games of the tournament to reach the Sweet 16 in a perfect streak, but a Purdue victory ultimately prevented him from participating. Most “perfect” dreams die early; by 2026, more than 25 million brackets were eliminated on ESPN before the first Thursday was over, largely due to High Point’s crushing loss to Wisconsin.
The difficulty lies in the sheer number of variables and the inevitable chaos in the early rounds. While it’s usually safe on paper to pick the top seed to win, the presence of a Cinderella like VCU or Oakland University ensures that nearly every bracket will suffer by the end of the first weekend.
Because the number of possible outcomes is so huge, mathematicians believe that even if every person on Earth filled in a unique bracket every year, it would still take hundreds of years to record a perfect table.