Short, plain answers to the questions people ask about the 2026-27 season, from college opening night to the Texas high school state finals. Each answer links to the official source for its dates.
The 2026-27 NCAA Division I women’s season starts on Sunday, November 1, 2026, with one game played overseas: Villanova against Notre Dame at the Palazzetto dello Sport in Rome, at noon Eastern. The first full day of games in the United States is Monday, November 2, 2026, when most of the country’s programs open (NCAA.com).
Many teams play an exhibition or two in late October before that, usually against Division II or NAIA schools, and those games do not count in the record. In Texas, several Division I programs open at home on November 2, including Texas A&M, Baylor, Houston, Rice and North Texas; Texas opens at the Moody Center on November 4. Division II, Division III and NAIA teams start on their own calendars, and some Texas small-college teams tip off in the last days of October.
Each school’s opener and home schedule are on our Texas college page, and the full set of season dates is on the 2026-27 season page.
Selection Sunday is March 14, 2027. That is the day the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee releases the full bracket of 76 teams, with every team’s seed, region and first opponent (NCAA.com). The selection show airs on ESPN; the NCAA had not published the start time for the women’s show as of early October 2026.
The committee also reveals the top 16 seeds on the Saturday before, March 13. Those 16 schools are the likely campus hosts for the opening weekend, so their fans know a day early that home games are coming.
Most conference tournaments wrap up in the week before Selection Sunday. The Big 12, SEC and ACC tournaments run March 3–7, and several smaller conferences finish as late as March 13 or 14. Their champions take the 32 automatic bids. The dates for every conference with a Texas team are on the season page.
The 2027 NCAA Division I women’s tournament has 76 teams, up from 68. The NCAA approved the larger field in May 2026 (NCAA announcement). The committee ranks all 76 teams from first to last and spreads them across four regions in that order.
The tournament runs in five stages:
Every game airs on ESPN networks. All dates are on the season page.
Seventy-six. The 2027 Division I women’s championship is the first with 76 teams, after the NCAA approved growing both the men’s and women’s fields from 68 on May 7, 2026 (NCAA).
The field is made up of 32 automatic qualifiers and 44 at-large teams. An automatic bid goes to each conference champion, which for most leagues means the winner of its postseason tournament. The selection committee picks the 44 at-large teams from everyone else.
The extra eight teams change the start of the tournament. Instead of four First Four games, there is a 12-game Opening Round on March 17–18. Twenty-four teams play, the 12 winners advance, and the bracket is down to 64 when the first round starts on March 19. From there it works the way fans know: two rounds on campus sites, two regionals, then the Final Four in Columbus on April 2 and April 4.
For how teams earn those spots, see how a team gets into the tournament.
The 2027 Women’s Final Four is at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. The national semifinals are Friday, April 2, 2027 and the championship game is Sunday, April 4, 2027 (NCAA.com). Tip times had not been announced as of early October 2026.
The four teams in Columbus are the winners of the four regionals, which are played March 26–29 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia and T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, two regions per city. Every game in the tournament airs on ESPN networks.
The NCAA handles Final Four ticketing through its official championship pages, which are the face-value source. Our ticket button for the Final Four goes to the NCAA’s Final Four page: Women’s Final Four tickets. The 2026 title went to UCLA; the 2027 champion is crowned in Columbus. The full tournament calendar is on the season page.
The 2027 Division I women’s regionals are in two cities, March 26–29: Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia and T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (NCAA.com). Each city hosts two of the four regions, so eight teams play in each building, first in the Sweet 16 and then in the Elite Eight. The four regional winners go to the Final Four in Columbus, Ohio, on April 2 and 4.
The NCAA moved the women’s tournament to two regional sites a few years ago, so fans of four teams can be in the same arena on the same weekend. Before the regionals, the first and second rounds are played on the home courts of the top 16 seeds, March 19–22.
Which teams go to which regional is not known until Selection Sunday, March 14, 2027. Teams are placed by their position on the committee’s seed list, not by where they are located, so a Texas team can land in either city. The rest of the dates are on the season page.
There are two ways in. The first is an automatic bid: each of the 32 Division I conferences gets one, and it goes to the conference champion, which for nearly every conference means the winner of its postseason tournament in early or mid-March. A team with a losing record can still reach the NCAA tournament by winning its conference tournament.
The second is an at-large bid. The Division I Women’s Basketball Committee chooses 44 at-large teams from the programs that did not win their conference. The committee looks at results, strength of schedule and other team-sheet data, then ranks all 76 teams in one list and places them in the bracket in that order (NCAA). Starting in 2027, the top 16 seeds are placed strictly by their true seed.
For Texas teams, the path runs through the SEC, Big 12, ACC, American, Conference USA, Mountain West, Pac-12, Southland, SWAC and United Athletic Conference tournaments. Those dates and sites are on the season page.
Most Division I women’s conference tournaments are in the first two weeks of March 2027, ahead of Selection Sunday on March 14. These are the conferences with Texas teams, in date order:
The SEC and Big 12 dates come from member schools’ schedules until the conferences post 2027 pages. Sources and the D2, D3 and NAIA tournaments are on the season page.
The Texas Longhorns open their 2026-27 home schedule on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, against Fairleigh Dickinson at the Moody Center in Austin, according to the official Texas schedule. Before that, Texas lists four exhibition dates in October, including the Orange-White scrimmage on October 21.
Texas plays in the SEC. Vic Schaefer is the head coach. The SEC tournament is March 3–7, 2027 in Greenville, South Carolina, and the NCAA tournament field is announced on March 14.
The school sells tickets through its own athletics ticket office, which is the face-value source. Game times and TV networks are posted on the school schedule as they are set; a few games already list ESPN2 or ABC, and radio is on the Longhorn Radio Network.
Our Texas Longhorns page has the full schedule, how to watch and ticket links. The same details for the other 24 Texas Division I programs are on the Texas college page.
Twenty-five Texas schools play NCAA Division I women’s basketball in 2026-27. Here they are by conference, alphabetical within each:
Realignment in July 2026 moved UTEP to the Mountain West and Texas State to the Pac-12, and the old WAC became the United Athletic Conference. UT Tyler competes in Division II.
Each school has its own page with the schedule, arena, TV and tickets, linked from the Texas college page.
Beyond its 25 Division I programs, Texas has 13 Division II women’s programs, all in the Lone Star Conference: Angelo State, Lubbock Christian, Midwestern State, St. Edward’s, St. Mary’s, Sul Ross State, Texas A&M International, Texas A&M-Kingsville, Texas Woman’s, UT Dallas, UT Permian Basin, UT Tyler and West Texas A&M. UT Dallas and Sul Ross State became active Division II members in July 2026.
Texas also has 14 Division III programs, in the American Southwest Conference, the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and the Southern Athletic Association (Trinity and Southwestern), and 13 NAIA programs in the Red River Athletic Conference, the Sooner Athletic Conference and the HBCU Athletic Conference. These schools give out no athletic scholarships (Division III) or a smaller number than Division I (Division II and NAIA), and their games are usually free or a few dollars at the door.
The Texas college page lists every program with its conference, city, gym and home opener, with links to the official schedules.
Where a game airs depends on the conference. Each league sells its TV rights as a package, so most of a team’s conference games end up on that league’s partners, and non-conference games are set game by game. The school’s official schedule page is the place to check: it lists the network or stream for each game as it is set, and many Texas schools are still filling those in as of early October.
A few patterns from the schedules Texas schools have posted: Texas lists games on ESPN2 and ABC and carries radio on the Longhorn Radio Network; SMU lists ACC Network games; Texas Tech and several Southland schools link to ESPN+; TCU lists radio on KTCU 88.7 FM. Smaller schools often stream home games on their own athletics site or a conference platform.
For the NCAA tournament, every game from the Opening Round through the April 4 title game airs on ESPN networks (NCAA). Each Texas Division I page has a how-to-watch section taken from the school’s site.
Start with the school. Every Division I program in Texas sells tickets through its own athletics ticket office or the official ticketing partner it links from its website, and that is where face-value single-game seats and season tickets are sold. Prices, student tickets and season packages differ by school, so check that school’s ticket page.
Each of our Texas program pages has an Official tickets button that goes to that school’s ticket page. For sold-out games, there is also a resale button for TicketNetwork, a resale marketplace. We are an affiliate and may earn a commission there, and resale prices can run above face value.
For Division II, Division III and NAIA games, tickets are usually sold at the door or on a small ticketing page linked from the athletics site. The Women’s Final Four in Columbus is ticketed by the NCAA; our Final Four link goes to its official page.
They are separate levels of college athletics, each with its own rules and national championship.
NCAA Division I is the biggest and most-televised level, with the largest athletic budgets and full athletic scholarships. Its tournament is March Madness, ending at the Women’s Final Four in Columbus on April 4, 2027.
NCAA Division II schools give partial scholarships and play a regional schedule. The 2027 Elite Eight is March 22–26 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
NCAA Division III schools give no athletic scholarships; players are aid-eligible only through academics and need. The 2027 semifinals and final are March 18 and 20 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
NAIA is a separate association, mostly of smaller private colleges, with its own scholarship rules. The 2027 national championship final site is March 18–23 in Sioux City, Iowa.
Texas has programs at all four levels. They are listed by division on the Texas college page.
All three run in March 2027.
Texas Division II teams reach those events through the Lone Star Conference tournament (March 2–7 in Frisco). Texas Division III and NAIA teams play their conference tournaments in late February. All of it is on the season page.
NCAA women’s games are four 10-minute quarters, 40 minutes of game time, with a 30-second shot clock. Women’s college basketball moved from two 20-minute halves to quarters in the 2015-16 season, and teams shoot free throws in the bonus after the fifth team foul of each quarter. Overtime periods are five minutes.
In real time, a regular-season game usually takes about two hours from tip to final horn. Televised games run a bit longer because of media timeouts, and close games stretch with fouls and timeouts in the last minutes.
Texas high school girls’ games are shorter. UIL basketball follows the national high school rules, which use four eight-minute quarters, and most varsity games are done in about an hour and a half.
If you are planning a trip to a game, the school schedule lists the tip time; plan on arriving 30 minutes early for parking and security at the bigger arenas. Our Texas college pages link each school’s schedule.
For UIL public schools, the 2026-27 girls’ basketball season starts with the first day of practice on October 21, 2026. The first scrimmage can be played on October 31, and the first regular-season games are allowed on November 6, 2026 (UIL).
November and December are mostly non-district games and holiday tournaments. Each school takes a five-day break that includes December 24–26 with no games or practice. District games cannot start before December 15 unless every school in the district agrees, and district play runs through January into early February. Districts must certify their playoff teams by February 9, 2027, and the playoffs begin February 11.
Private schools in TAPPS run a slightly different calendar: first practice October 26, first games November 5, according to the TAPPS 2026-27 calendar (TAPPS).
The full calendar is on our Texas high school page.
The top four teams from each district make the playoffs. That holds in every UIL conference from 1A to 6A, and each conference has 32 districts, eight in each of four regions.
The four qualifiers from a district are then split by enrollment. The two larger schools go into the Division 1 bracket and the two smaller schools into Division 2, and each division plays to its own state title. Six conferences with two divisions each make 12 girls’ state champions.
The rounds are single games: bi-district, area, regional semifinal, regional final, state semifinal, and the state final. Through the regional rounds, the schools involved agree on neutral sites and times, so playoff games are announced only a day or two ahead. Four schools in a region can agree to play the regional semifinal and final as one weekend tournament at a single site. The state semifinals are at UIL-assigned sites, and the finals are at the Alamodome in San Antonio (UIL).
The 2027 dates are on the Texas high school page.
The 2027 UIL girls’ basketball playoffs run from February 11 to March 6, 2027 (UIL):
The dates for each round are a window. The two schools pick the day, site and time within it, so check the school or district athletics site, or the UIL’s playoff brackets page, during the week of the game.
At the Alamodome, 1A and 2A play Thursday, March 4; 3A and 4A play Friday, March 5; and 5A and 6A play Saturday, March 6, with both divisions each day. More on the Texas high school page.
The 2027 UIL girls’ basketball state finals are at the Alamodome in San Antonio, March 4–6, 2027 (UIL).
The UIL had not posted game times as of early October 2026 and says the schedule may change. Game times and tickets go on its girls’ state tournament page.
The state semifinals are not at the Alamodome. They are on February 27 at 12 sites around the state, one for each pair of regions in each conference, listed on the UIL’s state semifinal sites page.
Private schools in TAPPS hold their state semifinals and finals February 24–27, 2027 in Waco and Robinson (TAPPS). The full calendar is on the Texas high school page.
They are the UIL’s six conferences, set by how many students a high school has in grades 9 through 12. The UIL redraws them every two years. The 2026-28 alignment, released February 2, 2026, uses these cutoffs (UIL):
Schools only play for a state title against schools in their own conference, and within each conference the playoffs are split again into Division 1 and Division 2 by enrollment. In basketball each conference has 32 districts across four regions.
To find your school’s conference and district, open the UIL’s basketball alignments page and search the PDF for the school name. Private schools are placed in TAPPS classes, which also run 1A to 6A but use their own cutoffs. More on the Texas high school page.
TAPPS is the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, the main association for private and religious high schools in Texas. Its schools do not play in the UIL playoffs; TAPPS runs its own season, districts and state championships, in six classes from 1A to 6A under a 2026-28 alignment.
For 2026-27 girls’ basketball, the TAPPS calendar has first practice on October 26, 2026, first games on November 5, and district certification on February 11, 2027. Playoff rounds must be finished by February 13 (bi-district), February 16 (area) and February 20 (regional). The state championships are February 24–25 for 1A, 3A and 4A and February 26–27 for 2A, 5A and 6A, at University High School in Waco, Robinson High School and Live Oak Classical School in Waco (TAPPS).
Roughly half of each district qualifies for the playoffs. TAPPS revised some fall dates in July 2026, so confirm early-season dates on its site. More on our Texas high school page.
Start with the school. Texas high schools and districts post their varsity schedules on the school or district athletics website, and that is the official source for game times, sites and gate tickets. Many districts sell tickets online through a link on that page; high school games are rarely on resale sites.
For scores, MaxPreps carries schedules and results that coaches enter during the season. It also publishes its own rankings, which girlhoop does not reproduce.
To see who your team plays in district, find your school in the UIL’s 2026-28 basketball alignments. Once the playoffs start on February 11, 2027, the UIL posts brackets on its playoff brackets page. Playoff sites and times are set by the two schools, often only a day or two ahead, so follow the school’s athletics site or social accounts that week.
If the team reaches the state finals, game times and tickets are on the UIL girls’ state tournament page. More on our Texas high school page.
2026-27 key dates → Texas college programs → Texas high school →
Written by the girlhoop desk in our own words. Dates are checked against NCAA.com, ncaa.org, naia.org, uiltexas.org, tapps.biz, conference sites and each school’s athletics site. We do not publish polls or rankings.