Seven Cities Named Finalists for Men’s and Women’s Division I Final Fours

Seven cities have been named finalists to host the respective men’s and women’s Division I Final Fours from 2032-36, the NCAA announced last week.

The winning cities will be announced after the NCAA’s summer meetings next July in Naples, Florida, during which the finalists will make presentations to the NCAA staff and committee members.

The finalists for the men’s Final Four are: Denver, Colorado; Houston, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Kansas City, Kansas; Las Vegas, Nevada; Nashville, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

The finalists for the women’s Final Four are: Detroit, Michigan; Indianapolis, Indiana; Las Vegas, Nevada; Minneapolis, Minnesota; New Orleans, Louisiana; Phoenix, Arizona and San Antonio, Texas.

Both the men’s and women’s committees discussed the having the Men’s and Women’s Final Fours at a single site on the same weekend. That idea has been tabled, though the NCAA will study the feasibility of doing so in 2037 and beyond, and those findings will inform the decision for the next bid cycle.

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Nashville’s Next Step

Five of the men’s finalists have hosted the Final Four in prior years, and a sixth — Las Vegas — is scheduled to do so for the first time in 2028. The only one that hasn’t hosted and isn’t yet scheduled to host is Nashville. The Music City has hosted both a Women’s Final Four (in 2014, at Bridgestone Arena) and an NFL Draft (in 2019) and has already been chosen to host the Super Bowl that will be played in February 2030 at the new Nissan Stadium, which is scheduled to open next year.

Denver has not hosted the Final Four since 1990, when UNLV routed Duke 103-73 in the biggest blowout in championship game history at McNichols Sports Arena, which closed in 1999. The NCAA only hosted two more Final Fours at non-domed arenas (1994 at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina; and 1996 at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey).

Kansas City, Missouri, has hosted the most championship games in Division I history with 10, though the last was in 1988 for the tournament’s 50th edition, won by local favorites Kansas in an all-Big 8 title game against Oklahoma. Indianapolis will equal that record in 2029, after having also hosted earlier this year, the seventh time it has hosted in the past 30 years.

New Orleans, meanwhile, has been a regular since first hosting in 1982, when it was the site of a coming-out party of sorts for a North Carolina freshman named Michael Jordan, who hit the title-clinching jump shot in the Tar Heels’ 63-62 win over Georgetown. Indiana won the title at the Superdome five years later on a jumper from a different No. 23, Keith Smart, for a one-point victory over Syracuse. New Orleans has since hosted four more times (1993, 2003, 2012 and 2022).

Detroit will host this year for the first time since 2009 and AT&T Stadium outside Dallas will host in 2030 for the first time since 2014. Atlanta will be the host city in 2031, the first time the event will be at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, though the city has previously hosted at two other venues: the Omni in 1977 and the Georgia Dome in 2002, 2007 and 2013.

Houston has also become a Final Four regular, welcoming the event in 2011, 2016 and 2023 after previously having done so only in 1971.

The 2026 Men’s Final Four was named Best Collegiate Sports Event of the Year at last week’s SportsTravel Awards.

“We’re in a servant role,” Samford athletics director Martin Newton, who will serve as chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for the upcoming season, told SportsTravel recently. “I go into every [Final Four] and think it’s the greatest sporting event in the world, I really do. It gets a little better each year and that goes to the commitment each city makes.”

Two Cities Eye First Women’s Final Four

Las Vegas and Detroit are bidding to host the women’s Final Four for the first time. Phoenix, coming off a successful hosting turn earlier this year when UCLA won its first women’s title, is eyeing its second stint, while Minneapolis is looking for its third chance to welcome the sport’s biggest event, having first done so in 1995 for the birth of the UConn dynasty, as the Huskies won the first of 12 national championships under head coach Geno Auriemma.

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Indianapolis (2005, 2011, 2016), New Orleans (1991, 2004, 2013) and San Antonio (2002, 2010, 2021) have been familiar hosts for the Final Four. Indianapolis will host in 2028 and San Antonio will next do so in 2029; New Orleans was slated to host in 2020 before the tournament was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The strong interest in hosting the Women’s Final Four reflects the championship’s stature as one of the premier events in sports, and the committee is grateful to every city that participated in the bid process,” said Liz Darger, senior associate athletics director and senior woman administrator at Brigham Young and chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee. “The finalists selected to date demonstrated the infrastructure, competition venues, hotel accommodations and community support needed to deliver an exceptional championship experience. They also offer the committee an opportunity to thoughtfully assess how each city can support the Women’s Final Four’s continued growth, in areas such as competition venue options, and evolving future needs. We look forward to the next stage of the evaluation process and to learning more about each finalist.”