Exclusive | Kalshi is offering $1 billion prize for a perfect March Madness bracket

One billion dollars is again being dangled to anyone who can successfully put together a perfect March Madness bracket.Kalshi — the prediction market platform that has burst onto the sports scene — is ponying up the dough, offering a $1 billion bounty for anyone who correctly predicts all 63 games of the 2026 March Madness tournament, The Post has learned.An announcement is expected on Monday, and any participants will need to sign up and create an account on Kalshi to take part in the challenge.The Post can confirm that the money will be paid out upfront, not in increments.Sixty-three games are all that separate you from a billion dollars, though that could very well be a zillion-dollar purse for a perfect bracket, considering it’s never happened.

If every game were a 50/50 coin flip, the odds of you successfully pulling together a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion.Things that are more likely than hitting a perfect bracket include getting hit by lightning, winning the lottery, and picking out a specific grain of sand on a beach.

The closest we’ve ever seen someone to nailing a perfect bracket is Gregg Nigi, a 2019 participant in the Capital One Bracket Challenge and neuropsychologist from Ohio, who correctly predicted the outcomes of the first 49 NCAA Tournament games.Assuming no one is actually able to correctly predict all 63 games of the 2026 March Madness Tournament, the closest bracket will get a $1 million prize from Kalshi.The competition is free to enter, and the mentoring nonprofit iMentor has also been granted $500,000 as part of this challenge, while Devin Booker’s charity Starting Five has also been granted $500,000.Kalshi is picking up where Warren Buffett left off in 2014, when he offered $1 billion over the span of 40 years to anyone who nailed all 63 games, though no one got out of the first round with a perfect bracket.The promotion and its hefty $1 billion price tag is backed by SIG Parametrics, LLC, a member of the Susquehann...