how far has a perfect bracket gone

There has never been a verified “perfect” March Madness bracket for the full NCAA men’s or women’s tournaments, but the furthest a perfect men’s bracket has ever gone is 49 straight correct picks.

Quick Scoop: How far has a perfect bracket gone?

The all-time record

• The longest verified perfect streak in a men’s NCAA Tournament bracket is 49 games in a row , set in 2019 by an Ohio man.

• That bracket stayed perfect from the First Four all the way into the Sweet 16 before finally busting.

• Before 2019, the best documented run was 39 games in 2017, and before that a notable 36-for-36 start in 2014.

Recent years: how long brackets stayed perfect

• 2025 (men’s): The last perfect bracket survived until game 43, when Kentucky beat Illinois in the second round.

• 2024 (men’s): The final perfect bracket fell in game 31, busted by Utah State’s win over TCU.

• 2023 (men’s): The last verifiably perfect one died in game 25 when No. 16 FDU upset No. 1 Purdue.

On the women’s side, perfection has gone even deeper in a single year:

• In 2025 (women’s) , a bracket known as “LisaVT22” started 57–0 and stayed perfect all the way to the Elite Eight before UCLA beat LSU.

Has anyone ever had a truly perfect bracket?

• No public, independently verified bracket has ever gone a full 63 games (men’s) or 63–67 games (women’s, depending on play-ins) without a miss.

• The odds are astronomically bad: estimates for a fan who knows basketball still put the chances at around 1 in 1.2 billion or worse, and for a random picker it’s closer to 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

Why this is a big deal every March

Every year, fans track “how many perfect brackets are left” as upsets start knocking people out within the first day or two of games.

In 2026, for example, an upset by High Point over Wisconsin wiped out millions of hopeful brackets almost immediately, ending perfect dreams for a huge chunk of players.

TL;DR

• Furthest any men’s bracket has gone perfectly: 49 straight correct picks (2019).

• Furthest any women’s bracket has gone perfectly: 57 straight correct picks into the Elite Eight (2025).

• No fully perfect bracket has ever been verified; the “perfect bracket” is still a March Madness fantasy.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.