Overview
South Korea's ten-club top division, known for a 144-game season and the loudest crowds in baseball.
The KBO League is the top professional baseball competition in South Korea. Ten clubs, all named for their corporate owners, play a 144-game season from late March to October, followed by a stepladder playoff in which lower seeds must work upward to reach the Korean Series.
The league is known for its supporter culture: organised cheering sections with designated leaders, team-specific songs for individual batters, and a bat-flip tradition that has become part of the sport's global vocabulary.
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
The KBO was founded in 1982 with six clubs, promoted by a government keen to expand professional sport. It expanded steadily to ten and now draws the largest crowds of any sports league in the country.
South Korea won Olympic gold in 2008 and the 2015 Premier12, and the league has sent Chan Ho Park, Shin-Soo Choo, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Ha-Seong Kim to the major leagues. Its brief spell as the only professional baseball on the planet, broadcast into the United States during the 2020 shutdown, introduced it to a much wider audience.
Governance
The Korea Baseball Organization governs the league and the national team programme, working with the WBSC internationally.