March Madness: How Would AI Fill In The 2026 Bracket?

Tobias Fanta Sports Betting Expert

2 minute read

Every year, as March Madness approaches, fans, celebrities, and experts alike fill out their NCAA tournament brackets, each predicting the outcome of the 68-team showdown. Some of the most well-known predictions come from public figures, while others include sports analysts, journalists, and basketball legends who use their insights and experience to forecast the tournament’s twists and turns. This year, VegasInsider decided to use ChatGPT to see how AI would fill out the 2026 Men's March Madness bracket. 

However, it wasn’t as simple as asking AI to fill in the bracket on its own. At first, ChatGPT was fed 1,700+ data points regarding the performance of the 2026 teams competing for the coveted trophy and subsequently it was instructed to use those data points to make its predictions.

According to AI, Duke, Arizona, Florida & Michigan are predicted to make the final four. After that, in the final showdown between Florida and Michigan, Michigan is predicted to win the 2026 championship.

You can see the entire AI-filled bracket below, and feel free to keep reading to learn about the entire process of our analysis in detail.

ANALYSIS DESCRIPTION

At first, ChatGPT was “fed” key information regarding this year’s March Madness teams as well as stats from previous tournaments, which gave AI enough information to make reasonable predictions for filling out the 2026 March Madness bracket.

Specifically, ChatGPT was given 1,700+ data points: 

1. Current season's team records: Win-loss totals for each team.
2. Team seedings: The official tournament seeds for each team.
3. Basic offensive and defensive stats: Points scored and Opponent points per game for each team.
4. Conference affiliation: Which conference each team belongs to.
5. Last year's tournament performance: How far each team advanced in the previous year's March Madness (if they participated).
6. Key player information: The top scorer and rebounder for each team & their stats.
7. Coach experience: Number of years the head coach has been coaching. 
8. Recent momentum: Each team's record in their last 10 games.
9. The tournament bracket: The actual matchups for the first round.

After that, based on the first-round matchups, each team’s data was given to ChatGPT one by one, moving from Round of 64 to Round of 32, followed by Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and finally, the National Championship Game. 

Based on the answers given by AI, the entire bracket was filled in, which can be seen above. 

Having said that, ChatGPT provided us with detailed justifications for its choices, which were kept. In total, ChatGPT gave us 71 pages and 10,000 words worth of matchup-by-matchup explanations, presented one by one, which can be found in its entirety here.

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Tobias Fanta

Tobias is a Digital PR Manager and he creates research focused on sports and entertainment; his research has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Forbes, The New York Times, Time Magazine & more. More from Tobias Fanta