The NCAA Tournament officially expanded to 76 teams on Thursday, but if you're worried about your bracket game being ruined, you can breathe easy. For now, the beloved 64-team bracket—the one that's been a March Madness staple since 1985—remains untouched.

The expansion, approved by both the men's and women's selection committees and set to take effect in 2026-27, adds 24 play-in games on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the first round. Teams that once had guaranteed spots on the 9, 10, and 11 seed lines will now have to earn their way into the main draw. But when it comes to filling out brackets, the big players are staying put. ESPN has no plans to expand its Tournament Challenge to include the new play-in games, and CBS is following suit, according to The Athletic's Lindsay Schnell.

"I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal," ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi told The Athletic. "As long as the main bracket of 64 is preserved for tipoff at noon on Thursday—which is absolutely what's going to happen—the vast majority of people will simply play along and not care about expansion."

And there's good reason to keep things familiar. ESPN's Tournament Challenge set a record for the fourth consecutive year in 2026, with 26.6 million brackets filled out—a 7% jump from 24.4 million the year before. At its peak, 766 brackets were submitted every second before the first round tipped off in March. That's the kind of engagement that makes March Madness a cultural phenomenon, not just a basketball tournament. Any format change that risks that experience would be a major misstep, and leaving the 64-team structure intact is the clearest sign yet that the NCAA knows what it has.

Whether the extra play-in games become must-watch TV is a separate question from whether they'll hurt the product fans already love. If Lunardi is right, the answer to that second question is a firm no. So go ahead and start your bracket prep—nothing's changing for the better part of the next decade.