Overview
Baseball's world championship for national teams, played every four years with full major-league participation.
The World Baseball Classic is the sport's premier international tournament for national teams, and the only one at which major-league players appear in numbers. It is run jointly by Major League Baseball, the MLB Players Association and the WBSC, and is held roughly every four years in March, before the MLB season.
The field expanded to twenty teams in 2023. Pitch limits protect players early in their preparation, and eligibility rules are generous — players may represent a country through ancestry or citizenship eligibility — which has strengthened teams well beyond their domestic playing base.
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
The Classic was created in 2006 to give baseball a genuine world championship after the sport's removal from the Olympic programme. Japan won the first two editions, the Dominican Republic went undefeated in 2013, and the United States finally won in 2017.
The 2023 final — Japan beating the United States, decided by Shohei Ohtani striking out his Angels teammate Mike Trout with two out in the ninth — drew record audiences on both sides of the Pacific and settled the tournament's standing. The next edition is scheduled for March 2026.
Governance
The tournament is operated by World Baseball Classic Inc., a joint venture of MLB and the MLB Players Association, and sanctioned by the WBSC as the sport's world championship.