Are there any perfect brackets left? Tracking the best remaining March Madness brackets in 2026 originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Sarcastically or not, “This year, I’ll have a perfect bracket” is a line heard plenty of times among college basketball fans. That claim usually proves false within hours of the NCAA Tournament tipping off.
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The same held true in 2026, when over 96 percent of perfect brackets were busted on day one. Notable upsets—including No. 12 High Point’s stunning comeback over No. 5 Wisconsin—were the primary culprits of the opening afternoon. In that 83–82 thriller, the Panthers erased an eight-point deficit in the final seven minutes, capped by Chase Johnston’s fast-break layup with 11.7 seconds remaining. The result was a catastrophic blow to millions of fans who had counted on the Badgers to advance, as an estimated 83 percent of entries across major platforms had Wisconsin moving on to the second round.
By the time the sun set on the first Thursday of the tournament, the dream of a flawless bracket remained alive for only a tiny fraction of players. Between High Point’s historic first-ever tournament win and No. 9 TCU edging out No. 8 Ohio State in the opening game, the “Madness” was in full effect, proving once again that the odds of one in 9.2 quintillion are as formidable as ever.
So, how many brackets are actually perfect?
Let’s check in after day one.
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Are there perfect March Madness brackets left in 2026?
There are more than a few perfect brackets left through the first day.
ESPN
10,754 perfect brackets remain in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge, out of more than 26 million.
NCAA
While the NCAA hasn’t released a raw number of perfect brackets in its bracket challenge, it announced that only 0.04 percent of brackets remain perfect. The NCAA also says about 14,000 remain perfect between all major online tournament challenges.
Yahoo
Yahoo has not revealed how many perfect brackets remain through day one, but only 0.1 percent remained perfect through the first 12 games.
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CBS Sports
CBS Sports has not revealed how many brackets in its challenge remain perfect.
HISTORY OF UPSETS BY SEED:
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 still perfect through the first day. On ESPN, over 26 million brackets had at least one wrong pick on the first day, with only 10,754 surviving the day.
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Perfect March Madness bracket odds
The odds of filling out a perfect March Madness bracket are famously calculated at 1 in 9.2 quintillion if every game were a simple 50/50 coin flip. To put that in perspective, you are statistically more likely to be struck by lightning while winning the Powerball jackpot than you are to nail all 63 games by pure luck.
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Even for those with deep college basketball knowledge who can narrow the odds down to roughly 1 in 120 billion, the feat remains one of the most statistically impossible challenges in all of sports.In the history of the tournament, no publicly verified bracket has ever stayed perfect through the entire 63-game slate.
The closest anyone has ever come was in 2019, when an Ohio man correctly predicted the first 49 games of the tournament, carrying a perfect streak deep into the Sweet 16 before a Purdue victory finally busted his entry. Most “perfect” dreams die much earlier; in 2026, over 25 million brackets on ESPN were busted before the first Thursday was even over, primarily due to High Point’s massive upset of Wisconsin.
The difficulty lies in the sheer volume of variables and the inevitable chaos of the early rounds. While picking the top seeds to win is often safe on paper, the presence of Cinderellas like VCU or Oakland ensures that almost every bracket is stained with a loss by the end of the first weekend.
Because the number of possible outcomes is so vast, mathematicians suggest that even if every person on Earth filled out a unique bracket every year, it could still take hundreds of years before a single perfect sheet is ever recorded.
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