Has There Ever Been a Perfect Women’s March Madness Bracket? One Entry Is Still Alive
Hundreds of perfect brackets are gone. One remains. The real question is whether perfection has ever actually happened.
Published March 25 2026, 12:11 p.m. ET
Every March, millions of people fill out a bracket, thinking they might be the one to get it perfect. It’s part strategy, part luck, and mostly chaos once the games actually begin.
Going into the Sweet 16 during the 2026 Women’s NCAA Tournament, that dream was somehow still alive for one single person. With a single perfect bracket still in place everyone was rushing to social media and chat forums such as Reddit with the same question: Has there ever been a perfect women’s March Madness bracket? Keep reading as we take a closer look at the numbers and whether a perfect bracket is even possible.
Has there ever been a perfect women’s March Madness bracket? The answer is still no.
As of 2026, there has never been a verified perfect 63-0 women’s March Madness bracket in any major tracked contest, per NBC News.
That includes large platforms like ESPN’s bracket challenge and the NCAA’s official tracking. Even in tournaments that feel more predictable early on, no bracket has made it all the way through without a single miss.
It’s not because people aren’t close. It’s because perfection at this scale is incredibly hard to sustain once the games start stacking up.
The 2026 tournament came surprisingly close before narrowing to one bracket.
According to NBC News, there were still 235 perfect brackets being tracked on March 23, 2026. By the time the day ended, however, the number had dropped to just one single perfect bracket remaining.
The field tightened quickly after a series of results, including No. 10 seed Virginia taking down No. 2 Iowa in double overtime and No. 6 seed Notre Dame knocking off No. 3 Ohio State.
Meanwhile, the men’s side had already lost every perfect bracket, which made the lone remaining women’s entry stand out even more.
As one fan put it on Reddit, “Unless this person can pull off the miracle of all miracles, it’s looking like another year will go by with no perfect brackets.”
Even strong picks break down once the tournament reaches later rounds.
Getting a few games right is one thing. Getting all 63 is something else entirely. Part of the reason why there has never been a perfect bracket is because the odds of that happening are extremely unlikely.
Per NBC News, a completely random bracket has about a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance of being perfect. Even a well-informed bracket only improves those odds to around 1 in 120 billion.
Furthermore, managing a perfect bracket gets even more difficult as the tournament continues to move forward. Later matchups often come down to evenly matched teams, where outcomes feel closer to coin flips than sure things.
Even the closest attempts have eventually fallen apart.
There have been impressive runs over the years, but none have reached the finish line. A neurophysiologist named Gregg Nigl currently holds the record for the longest perfect NCAA March Madness Bracket. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, he correctly predicted 49 consecutive games in 2019. His streak, however, ended during the second round of the Sweet 16. Per the NCAA, the previous record for correct bracket picks was 39 consecutive games in 2017.
These two examples are rare, but they do happen. These brackets, however, also show how quickly a perfect bracket can bust toward the end of the tournament. Even when a bracket looks solid on paper, it only takes one unexpected result to end the run.