The 2026 NCAA lacrosse tournaments get their official starting point Sunday night, when selection shows on ESPNU will reveal the brackets for both the men's and women's fields.
The women's show airs first at 9 p.m. ET, with the men's following at 9:30 p.m. ET. Both can also be streamed on fubo.
Twenty-nine programs will compete in the women's tournament, built on 15 automatic bids and 14 at-large selections. The top three seeds earn first-round byes, with the remaining 26 teams playing opening-round games before the bracket narrows. North Carolina and Northwestern claimed automatic bids by winning their respective conference championships.
The men's field is smaller, with 18 teams total. Ten automatic qualifiers are joined by eight at-large selections. Four teams will meet in an opening round just to reach the First Round proper, after which the bracket runs as a standard single-elimination tournament. Notre Dame and Princeton enter as leading contenders in what has been described as a balanced field.
From there, teams in both tournaments will play through a single-elimination format with the national championship games scheduled for Memorial Day weekend.
