The Kansas State High School Activities Association has changed its basketball state tournament format and announced site selections for the next two seasons. Beginning with the 2026 tournament, the state sites will host only semifinals and finals for each classification rather than the final three rounds with eight boys and girls teams of each class. State sites will now host boys and girls teams from two different classifications for the semifinals and championship round. The quarterfinal round of state will now be played at seven different venues in five cities. Quarterfinal hosts for state will include White Auditorium in Emporia, United Wireless Arena in Dodge City, the Kansas City Kansas Community College Fieldhouse in Kansas City, Mabee Arena in Salina at Kansas Wesleyan University, the Tony’s Pizza Event Center in Salina, the Garvey Center in Wichita at Friends University, and Charles Koch Arena in Wichita at Wichita State. KSHSAA Assistant Executive Director for Basketball Kyle Doperalski said on the KSHSAA Covered Podcast that the format change will improve the atmosphere at state games.
For the next two-year cycle, White Auditorium will also host the final four teams for semifinal and championship action for the 2A and 1A Division II tournaments. United Wireless Arena will host the 1A DI semifinals and finals, the Hutchinson Sports Arena will have 3A and 4A, while 5A and 6A play their final games at Koch Arena. It will be the first time since 1953 that multiple state tournaments have been contested in the same building. 2A, 4A, and 6A girls basketball quarterfinals and 1A, 3A, and 5A boys quarterfinals are set for March 10 with the rest of the field playing March 11. Quarterfinal round game location will be set by proximity to the higher seed, not by class with the highest four seeds of each state tournament being placed as close to home as possible among the 28 state quarterfinal games across Kansas. However, if the distance from the lower seed is greater than 250 miles from where the game would be played near the higher seed, the game will be moved to a centrally located site. Doperalski said the desire to change the traditional format came from the membership.
The association says this also brings basketball into line following the recently implemented changes to state football and soccer championship formats featuring multiple games at single sites. The semifinals of state basketball are set for March 12-14. The 2027 quarterfinal games will be played March 10 and 11 with semifinals and finals from March 11-13.
