College Football Playoff is expanding to 24 teams in 2027

The College Football Playoff is expanding once again.The CFP will switch to a 24-team format for the 2027 season, the organization announced Monday. The new playoffs will double the number of postseason teams from the current format, the 12-team playoff, which began in 2024.Under the 24-team field, each Power 4 conference champion will receive an automatic bid. There will be 19 at-large bids, and an auto-bid for the highest-ranked Group of 6 school. (The Group of 6 consists of the the American Athletic, Sun Belt, Mid-America, Mountain West, and Pac-12 conferences, as well Conference USA.)The top 25 teams will still be ranked by the CFP selection committee. The Power 4 — which includes the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 — will no longer host conference championships under the new rules. Instead, their champions will be determined by regular season standings and conference-determined tiebreakers. In the new format, the top eight teams will receive first-round byes. Teams ranked nine through 16 will host those ranked 17 through 24 at their own stadiums to begin the playoffs, with the second round also taking place on campus, bringing the total number of games played at home stadiums to 16. The quarterfinals and semifinals will still take place at the New Year’s six bowls, the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, Peach and Cotton bowls. “The decision to expand was driven by a desire to increase opportunities for FBS programs, student-athletes and fan bases to participate in the Playoff and have a chance to play for the CFP National Championship, while new scheduling standards incentivize institutions to schedule more compelling non-conference matchups during the regular season,” the CFP said in a statement. As a result of the new format, the annual Army-Navy game will be moved to what used to be conference championship week, typically the first Saturday in December. There will be no other games scheduled for that day. The CFP was first introduced in 2014, when only four teams made the postseason. The four-team playoff was in effect through 2023, after which the field tripled to 12 teams. After only three seasons of the 12-team format, the CFP will soon have six times the number of teams than when it first began. No format has been able to avoid controversy so far.In 2023, for example, the last year of the four-team format, an undefeated Florida State team was omitted from the playoff after a late-season injury to its starting quarterback — the first time an undefeated Power 4 school was left out of the postseason. Last year, Notre Dame was left out of the playoff in the committee’s final ranking, falling below Miami after leading the Hurricanes in every ranking until the ultimate one. Next year’s college football regular season will begin the week before Labor Day, on the weekend previously known as Week 0. The regular season will conclude on the final weekend of November.The 24-team format will be in place for at least five seasons, beginning next year through the 2031-32 season.