The College Football Playoff field will remain at 12 teams for the 2026-27 seasons, per a CFP Management Committee announcement on Friday.

There had been talks of the CFP field expanding to 16 teams, but the SEC and Big Ten could not reach a resolution regarding a future playoff format before the deadline on Friday.

“After ongoing discussion about the 12-team playoff format, the decision was made to continue with the current structure,” said Rich Clark, Executive Director of the College Football Playoff.

“This will give the Management Committee additional time to review the 12-team format, so they can better assess the need for potential change.”

The format for next season’s 12-team playoff field has some notable tweaks.

It will still include five conference champions and seven at-large teams, but all four of the Power Four conference champions will be guaranteed a spot, with the fifth spot going to the highest-ranked Group of Six conference champion.

The other stipulation is that Notre Dame is guaranteed a spot in the 12-team field if it finishes in the Top 12 of the rankings.

ESPN has Notre Dame No. 3 in its early rankings, while USA Today and CBS Sports have the Irish No. 5.

Notre Dame returns CJ Carr at quarterback and plays a schedule that includes just one team from the 2025 CFP field, playing host to Miami on Nov. 7.

BYU, which lost in the Big 12 championship game to Texas Tech, is the only other opponent of note on Notre Dame’s 2026 schedule — Oct. 17, in Provo, Utah — adding to the likelihood the Irish will finish in the top 12 of the CFP rankings next season.

The Notre Dame stipulation could impact how many SEC teams make the field if the Irish finish in the top 12 in 2026, as many have already projected in various so-called “Way-too-Early” preseason rankings.

The SEC had five teams in the CFP field this past season: No. 3 seed Georgia, No. 6 seed Ole Miss, No. 7 seed Texas A&M, No. 8 seed Oklahoma and No. 9 seed Alabama.

Ole Miss was the only SEC school to advance to the semifinals, where it was defeated by eventual CFP championship game runner-up Miami.

Georgia and Texas are the two teams most favor to win the SEC next season.

The Bulldogs have road tests with 2025 CFP teams Alabama (Oct. 10) and Ole Miss (Nov. 7), and play host to another 2025 CFP team in Oklahoma on Sept. 26.

Georgia’s neutral site game with Florida will be played in Atlanta (Oct. 31) with Jacksonville’s EverBank Stadium undergoing a $1.4 billion renovation over the next two seasons.

If the format that will be use next season had been in place this past season, both Duke and Notre Dame would have made the field, and Miami and James Madison would not have been among the 12 teams.

As it was, Duke won the ACC but was not among the five highest-ranked conference champions, and Notre Dame, ranked No. 11 in the final CFP rankings, was also left out.

The Big Ten has been in favor of a 24-team playoff with multiple automatic qualifiers per conference, while the SEC has pitched a “5-11” format, with five slots guaranteed to conference champions and the next 11 at-large spots going to the highest-ranked teams remaining.

The ACC and Big 12 backed the SEC format, but the Big Ten did not.

ESPN reported the Big Ten was willing to sign off on a 16-team field with the contingency that the SEC would agree to a 24-team format as early as the 2028 season.

Clark indicated that another year of the 12-team field will provide more data for the SEC and Big Ten to evaluate a best-case scenario for expansion.

“While they all agree the current format has brought more excitement to college football and has given more schools a real shot in the postseason,” Clark said in the release, “another year of evaluation will be helpful.”