The College Football Playoff will not expand beyond 12 teams for the 2026 season.
Friday marked the deadline for the CFP management committee—the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua—to inform ESPN of any changes to next season’s format.
“After ongoing discussion about the 12-team playoff format, the decision was made to continue with the current structure,” said CFP executive director Rich Clark. “This will give the Management Committee additional time to review the 12-team format, so they can better assess the need for potential change. While they all agree the current format has brought more excitement to college football and has given more schools a real shot in the postseason, another year of evaluation will be helpful.”
The committee met Sunday in Miami, but ultimately Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and the SEC’s Greg Sankey, who together must agree on any changes to the CFP, were unable to find common ground.
The SEC continues to prefer a 16-team format with five automatic qualifiers and 11 at-large bids determined by the CFP selection committee. The Big Ten is in favor of an even larger field, potentially up to 24 teams, and multiple automatic bids for top conferences.
While the 2026 CFP will remain at 12 teams, expansion discussions are expected to continue. Under the current CFP contract, Dec. 1 is the annual deadline to inform ESPN of any changes to the next season’s structure, so leaders will have at least the next 10 months to explore more ideas. This year’s deadline was pushed back by nearly two months in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to find a solution for expansion in 2026.
There are other significant changes coming to the CFP this year, though.
Instead of the five highest-ranked conference champions receiving automatic CFP bids as in the past two years, new rules will give the champions of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC automatic CFP bids, regardless of their rankings. The highest-ranked Group of 6 conference champion will also get an automatic bid. If Notre Dame is ranked inside the top 12, it will also receive an automatic bid, which could potentially push out a higher-ranked at-large team.
The CFP is also ending its performance-based revenue-distribution model that saw Miami this season and Notre Dame last season each rake in $20 million in bonus money, in addition to big conference-wide payouts. Moving forward, the Big Ten and SEC will earn roughly 29% of CFP revenue each, the ACC 17%, the Big 12 15%, and the Group of 6 conferences collectively 10%.
