A Packed Sports Calendar Puts Pittsburgh in the Spotlight
Pittsburgh welcomes a full slate of high-profile sports events this winter, bringing athletes, fans and unforgettable championship moments to the city.
A Message from Jim Britt
Vice President, Sports Events - SportsPITTSBURGH
On behalf of the SportsPITTSBURGH team, I would like to wish you a very Happy New Year.
We hope your holidays were wonderful and your 2026 is off to an excellent start. Working with you is always a pleasure, and we look forward to creating more success stories together during the year ahead.
In 2026, we will continue to welcome our annual events and festivals as well as new events -- not the least of which will be Pittsburgh hosting the NFL Draft for the first time. That spectacular showcase event will take place April 23-25 and bring more than 500,000 football fans to our fine city to share the excitement.
SportsPITTSBURGH is grateful for the opportunity to work with you and offer guidance and expertise that will ensure the success of your events. So, again Happy New Year. And here’s to a year filled with collaboration and shared achievements.
Together, let’s keep the momentum going.
Atlantic 10 Men’s Basketball Tournament Coming to Pittsburgh
The 50th anniversary edition of the Atlantic 10 Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament will take place at PPG Paints Arena from Wednesday, March 11 through Sunday, March 15. The event, which is returning to Pittsburgh this year for the first time since 2017, will feature 13 games over the five-day period. All 14 members of the conference will participate, with the championship game set for March 15 at 1:00 p.m. and the winner receiving an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The conference was formed in 1975 as the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League, an eight-member men’s basketball-only league that was also known as the Eastern 8. Duquesne University won the first-ever Eastern Eight Tournament with a victory over Villanova University at The Spectrum in Philadelphia on March 5, 1977. The tournament was held at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh each year from 1978 through 1982, and 1982 was the year the conference was renamed the Atlantic 10.
“We secure our locations and venues three or four years out from an event,” Atlantic 10 Conference Commissioner Bernadette McGlade said. “Looking down the road and knowing that 2026 was our 50th anniversary, and that the paperwork for the league was actually formed in Pittsburgh, we thought it would be great synergy to take the tournament back to where it all began. Plus, we had been to Pittsburgh previously during my tenure, and it was a great championship.”
SportsPITTSBURGH is a prominent member of the local organizing committee for this year’s Atlantic 10 Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament, and McGlade was effusive in assessing the contributions of the sports development division of VisitPITTSBURGH.
“SportsPITTSBURGH has been a great asset. They’ve been tremendously helpful,” she said. “We held our men’s and women’s basketball media day in Pittsburgh last September 30, and it was a big event with more than 300 people attending and a lot of excitement. SportsPITTSBURGH was a big part of that, and they’ve been working hand in hand with my staff ever since.
“We’re partnering with them on sponsorship opportunities and some community events that we do, such as our Education Through Sports Day for youth and First Responders Day. SportsPITTSBURGH is helping us open doors and make connections with the community to help ensure we can have an exciting event for the five days we’ll be in Pittsburgh.”
When asked what makes Pittsburgh a great destination for events such as the Atlantic 10 Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament, McGlade said. “Well, certainly PPG Paints Arena is a beautiful and state-of-the-art facility and has hosted the Atlantic 10 tournament previously as well as NCAA tournament action. When we were here in 2017, our fans loved the full-service hotel properties Downtown, the ability to walk to the arena and the great restaurants, too.”
Last November, it was announced that McGlade will step down as Atlantic 10 commissioner at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year. Since its humble beginning, the conference has grown to become a 14-member, 23-sport league. The men’s basketball tournament remains its most high-profile championship, however.
After 18 years as commissioner, McGlade couldn’t really pinpoint a specific moment as the most memorable she’s ever seen in the Atlantic 10 tournament, but she did share this:
“Year after year, when you go to the championship you have the opportunity over multiple days to see a lot of the individuals who support our schools and all our teams, and you get to spend time with them and share in their excitement. And, whoever wins the championship, when the confetti falls out of the ceiling of the arena you see how excited the student athletes are to move on to the postseason and March Madness. That really makes you think, ‘You know, this is what it’s all about.’”
NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s National Championships Also Offer Opportunity to Witness Great Basketball Action
For the second straight year, the NCAA Division II women’s basketball national champion will be crowned at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse in Pittsburgh -- and this year there’s a huge bonus.
The 2026 NCAA Division II Basketball National Championships will take place from Tuesday, March 24 through Saturday, March 28 on Duquesne University’s home court and will include Elite Eight competition on both the women’s and the men’s sides. That will amount to a total of 14 games -- including the quarterfinals, semi-finals and championship games. SportsPITTSBURGH and PennWest University-Clarion will co-host the championships.
“This is bringing together the excitement of Division II basketball as a whole by bringing the men to the party,” said Mitchell Bailey, coordinator of men’s basketball championships for the NCAA. “This has only been done one other time, in 2018, but we’ll do it again in Fort Wayne the next two years, and it could potentially continue beyond that. We’re bringing in fans that may have stakes on both the men’s and women’s sides for this exciting basketball event in Pittsburgh.”
SportsPITTSBURGH is serving as tournament director of the NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s National Championships, leading the marketing, ticket sales, hospitality, community engagement and other efforts.
“You need people in the host city to put together a committee that’s genuinely excited, wants to make your event an excellent event, and will put in the work that it takes to do that. Here’s, that’s obviously SportsPITTSBURGH,” said Lynne Andrew, associate director of women’s basketball for the NCAA. “Then, we always have a Division II host that comes in and helps to run the event as well, and in this case that’s Clarion.
“There’s also the need for quality hotels in the host city, especially in a small footprint, which Pittsburgh has with the competition venue and the hotels close together. That ensures that student athletes aren’t on buses and don’t have to travel a long distance to get to the gym and back.
“Pittsburgh is a great place where we think the student athletes and teams, and their families and fans, will enjoy being there and having a great championship.”
Bailey was also quick to point out that fans shouldn’t underestimate the entertainment value provided by Division II basketball.
“Everyone knows about Division I, but every division is exciting,” he said. “Division II basketball has amazing athletes as well, and they show a lot of pride in their schools. I hope that fans in Pittsburgh will come out and enjoy some Division II basketball. It’s going to be jam-packed with really good, talented student athletes.”
“Pittsburgh is a sports town and the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division II National Championships are a great opportunity for fans to come and get their basketball fix,” Andrew added. “They can watch a lot of basketball in a short period of time. It’s a lot of games featuring teams from all over the country. It should be fun.”
Steel City Junior Volleyball Events Coming to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center
The David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh will feature wall-to-wall volleyball action on back-to-back weekends when the Nike Steel City Freeze (January 31-Febraury 1) and the Nike Steel City Boys Championships (February 6-8) take place.
The tournaments will involve budding volleyball players, ages 12-18, from across the country -- with 430 girls teams, 430 boys teams and more than 25,000 participants and spectators expected. The action will unfold on 57 volleyball courts.
“This will be the 11th year of the original weekend of the Steel City Freeze, and this is the third year of the boys tournament being a stand-alone,” said Tim Keating of GK Sports, the organizer of the tournaments. “We used to include both in one weekend, but it started to grow so rapidly we decided to work with the Convention Center to get back-to-back weekends.”
Keating said he was creating and developing events for a different company years ago when he met officials from SportsPITTSBURGH at an events conference. Initial conversations led to more serious discussions about bringing youth volleyball tournaments to Pittsburgh, and the result was the Steel City Freeze.
“There was a void in Pittsburgh. They didn’t have an event at that time of year for junior volleyball,” Keating said. “So, I started the conversation with SportsPITTSBURGH and we ended up creating an event. At that point junior volleyball was on the uprise, and it is even more so now. The first year we had 86 teams total participate. Now, here we are 11 years later with 860 teams between the boys and the girls.
“More than 200 of the girls teams and more than 300 of the boys teams will come from outside of 100 miles of Pittsburgh. This is a huge undertaking, but the floor at the Convention Center makes it a perfect site for these junior volleyball tournaments. At the conclusion of the action on February 8, the crew will pull up the courts, and the next morning you’ll never know a volleyball tournament was there. But the experiences the athletes have will last a long time.”
