The Players Era Festival, the Las Vegas-based NIL event that pays millions to college basketball players and debuted with eight teams this season, is expanding again — and in historic fashion.
As previously reported, Players Era (PEF) is inflating to 18 teams for next season, but it’s 2026 that stands to make history. Event organizers are planning to stage a whopping 32-team tournament in November 2026, sources told CBS Sports, which would make the PEF by far the biggest non-NCAA Tournament event in college basketball history.
Details are still ongoing and far from finalized, but broadly speaking, here is how it would work, according to sources: In 2026, the PEF would take place over multiple weeks in the first month of the 2026-27 season, with group-stage play (a la FIFA World Cup format) probably staged in multiple cities, not just Las Vegas. After teams play in group-stage competition, the event would become a premier four-bracket concept held in Las Vegas.
The idea is to bookend the college basketball season with two major events: March Madness at the end and “November madness” in the beginning.
If/when the Players Era can fill its field with 32 teams, it would dwarf all other November multi-team events and fundamentally change the way college basketball’s nonconference schedule is built.
There is also a four-team women’s field on the docket for 2025 (Duke, Texas, South Carolina, UCLA) with the potential to grow the women’s pool in 2026 as well.
The revolutionary concept is poised to be made possible by an under-the-radar development in college basketball this week, tucked behind all the noise and attention of the NCAA Tournament: The Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Oversight Committees have proposed to slightly expand the men’s and women’s regular season from 31 to 32 games. If the college basketball season allows for 32 regular-season games, it makes the prospect of a 32-team tournament event all the more plausible.
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Teams committed to Players Era for ’25 include Alabama, Auburn, Baylor, Creighton, Gonzaga, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Michigan, Notre Dame, Oregon, Rutgers, San Diego State, St. John’s, Syracuse, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Saint Joseph’s. Many (perhaps all) of those will play in 2026. Oregon won the inaugural 2024 event over Alabama.
A few more big-name schools are expected to fill slots in the coming months, but sources said that a number of spots for the 2026 tournament will be held off and saved until the spring of 2026, in an effort to build out a 32-team event with huge brands but also teams with rosters expected to be of top-25 quality for that season.
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