NJCAA locks in multi-year hosts for 2026-28 basketball championships

NJCAA has already mapped its winter basketball championship trail through 2028, with bids for the fall 2025 through spring 2028 cycle closed and sites awarded between January and April 2024. The 2025-28 championship bids include Division II men’s basketball, Division III men’s basketball, Division I women’s basketball, Division II women’s basketball and Division III women’s basketball.

Visit Lake Charles and McNeese State University will host the Division I women’s championship for 2026, 2027 and 2028 at McNeese’s Legacy Center, a $35.9 million, 142,000-square-foot arena and health-and-human-education complex. The 24-team event is set for March 22-30, 2026, March 23-29, 2027 and March 21-27, 2028.

Danville Area Community College’s host agreement covers the Division II men’s tournament at the Mary Miller Center for 2026, 2027 and 2028, with a 20-team field made up of 16 automatic qualifiers and four at-large selections. NJCAA put the championship at 31 years in Danville in 2024, and the 2026-28 dates are March 16-21, 2026, March 15-20, 2027 and March 20-25, 2028.

Brownwood Coliseum, built in 1963, has undergone $5 million in renovations over the past three years, and the new Brownwood Event Center Complex across the street will handle the pre-tournament banquet, team meetings and hospitality for the Division III women’s championship. Herkimer College will host the Division III men’s championship in 2026 and 2028, while Rochester MN Sports will run the 2027 edition at the Regional Sports Center in Rochester, Minnesota. Herkimer also hosted the 2023 and 2024 tournaments.

NJCAA’s first men’s basketball championship was in 1948 at Southwest Missouri State Fieldhouse in Springfield, Missouri, after supporting the Western States Basketball Tournament from 1945-47 with champions from Pasadena, Sacramento and Compton. The men’s title moved to Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1949, and Trinity Valley beat Connors State 69-61 in the 2025 Division I men’s championship there.