NCAA Division I baseball tournament

The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship is held each year starting in late May through mid June and features 64 college baseball teams in the United States, culminating in the eight-team Men's College World Series (MCWS) at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska.

The tournament is unique in that it features four tiers of competition, alternating between double-elimination brackets and best-of-three series. In fact, throughout the entire 64-team tournament, a team can lose a total of four games and still be crowned champions.

Format

During team selection, the top 16 of the 64-team field are given "national seeds". As in other NCAA tournaments, conference champions (usually determined by a tournament) receive automatic bids, and the selection committee fills the remaining spots.

The first round of the tournament, called Regionals, consists of 16 locations that include four teams, seeded 1 through 4, competing in a double-elimination bracket. The 16 national seeds are given the No. 1 seed in their assigned regional. The host sites are determined largely by merit – most national seeds host – but are also contested by bids from schools guaranteeing the NCAA a certain amount of revenue from that regional. Host teams traditionally have a large advantage, although the home team for each game is determined by rule, so the host school sometimes plays as the visiting team.

The regionals are paired together as in a typical 16-team bracket tournament; the regional containing the No. 1 national seed is paired with the regional containing the No. 16 national seed, that containing the No. 2 national seed with that containing the No. 15 national seed, and so forth. This creates the matchups for the second round of competition, the Super Regionals, which are a best-of-three series between the winners of each paired regional.

The Super Regionals are typically hosted by the higher national seed in the regional pairing. If that team does not advance, but the lower national seed advances, the Super Regional will be played at that team's field. If neither of the two advancing teams are national seeds, they will bid for hosting rights. Although one school hosts all three games, the teams split home-team status in the first two games, with the host school batting last in the opening game and first in game 2. If a third game is needed, a coin toss determines home-team status.

The eight Super Regional winners meet in Omaha, Nebraska, in the Men's College World Series. The MCWS mimics the earlier rounds, consisting of two double-elimination brackets of four teams each. Thereafter, the winners of each bracket meet in a best-of-three final. The winner of this final series wins the MCWS and is crowned the national champion. The school with the most national champions is USC with 12, though the Trojans have not won one since 1998, and have not appeared in the World Series at all since 2002. They are followed by LSU, with 8 national champions between 1991 and 2025.

Team titles

The following table shows the total national championships won by school, as well a map of all champions.

Appearances

Total Columns

• School refers to the current name and branding of the baseball team.
• Conference shows the conference as of the 2026 season.
• # Total appearances in the NCAA Tournament, not counting vacated appearances.
• 16 Finished in the top 16 of the tournament: top 2 in a District or Regional (1950 through 1998) or won a Regional (1999 to present). Prior to 1966, some Districts would just select a representative straight into the College World Series, so some years may not have 16 teams with this designation.
• WS Total appearances in the College World Series
• CH National championships

Table Entries

• CH National champion
• RU National Runner-up
• W3 W4 W5 W7 Played in the College World Series with the given placement. All World Series since 1950 have had 2 teams finish in 5th and two teams finish in 7th. Since 1988, all have had 2 teams finish in 3rd, but before then, some years would have separate 3rd and 4th place teams, depending on how the bracket played out.

Two additional unusual circumstances are marked in the table:

• In 1958, BYU won its district tournament, but withdrew from the College World Series due to an unwillingness to play on Sundays. They are marked with a D1 and not credited with a College World Series appearance.
• Arizona State's participation in the 2007 tournament was later vacated by the NCAA. It is shown in the table with strikethrough, and not included in the school's total columns.