While regular season MLB games have already occurred in Mexico, Japan and the United Kingdom among others, there are plenty of opportunities around the world to increase popularity in the sport.
With February now underway, baseball fans across the country and world are starting to tune back into their favorite sport, with pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training next week.
While spring training in Arizona and Florida is a fixture of every MLB offseason, this year gives fans a bit more to sink their teeth into before regular season play starts with the 2026 World Baseball Classic taking place next month.
Though not viewed as a global game in the same light that association football and basketball are, baseball continues to be a growing sport with a few worldwide bastions of the game, particularly in Japan, Venezuela, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
As other North American sports leagues have done in recent years, Major League Baseball has made a concerted effort to capitalize on growing global popularity, especially following Shohei Ohtani’s rise to superstardom late last decade.
After first exploring international games in August 1996 with a three-game series between the New York Mets and San Diego Padres in Monterrey, Mexico, the league has since had games in Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Korea, with plans for a game in Paris, France in 2025 ultimately shelved.
There are currently plans for one international series this coming MLB season, with the Padres set to take on the Arizona Diamondbacks in a two-game affair at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú in Mexico City, marking the third MLB series in the city after previous visits in 2023 and 2024.
In addition to the games in other countries, the league has also played several games in Puerto Rico over the years, most of which occurring in 2003 and 2004, when the Montreal Expos played 43 home games in San Juan’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium each year. Outside of their temporary residence, games have also been played in San Juan in April 2001, June 2010 and April 2018.
Yet with 20 international teams slated to compete against each other next month in baseball’s grand global competition, there are plenty of other opportunities for MLB to bring regular season action to more countries in hopes of expanding the sport’s popularity.
While complex geopolitics and worsening relationships on the world stage don’t exactly bode well for games in baseball hotspots such as Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia, there remain several tantalizing options for both the league’s fans and players in the coming years.
Here’s a look at three countries that would serve as ideal hosts for regular season MLB games:
1. Italy
Having been a consistent competitor in the World Baseball Classic since the tournament’s 2006 inception, baseball has significantly grown in the country in the past 20 years, even as the national team remainst mostly comprised of Americans with Italian descent.
In operation since 1948, the Italian Baseball League remains one of the most prominent baseball leagues in Europe, with Junior Guerra, Robel Garcia and Jason Conti among the league’s MLB alumni.
While not a major sport in Italy itself, baseball has long been a fixture in the Italian American community, a relationship that grew reciprocal with the Italian Baseball League established following the presence of American soldiers near the end of World War II.
This provides an excellent opportunity for the league to take the relationship between Italian Americans and baseball full circle, while also providing a historic, unique backdrop for a baseball game that has yet to be seen.
While Rome would be the most obvious location for an Italian game, any major Italian city with a large football stadium would likely get the job done, with the novelty of the game likely to draw scores of Italian fans and tourists alike.
2. South Africa
While North American professional sports leagues have rampantly expanded their presence internationally in recent years, Africa in its entirety remains an untouched continent across the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL when it comes to regular season action, with the existence of the NBA-organized Basketball Africa League serving as the lone representation.
Though there aren’t a ton of obvious opportunities for immediate growth of the sport throughout the continent, it’s impossible to ignore the potential in South Africa, a country that has participated in the World Baseball Classic before and was involved in the qualifications for this year’s tournament.
Although known as much more of a cricket hotspot than it is for baseball, an effort by MLB to expand its presence in the country could help create a reciprocal relationship between countries that prefer baseball and those that prefer cricket, especially as cricket’s presence continues to rise in the United States.
With MLB having only two South African-born players in the league’s expansive history, the appearance of the world’s best talent in the sport could help lay the foundation for a future baseball powerhouse – a thought that doesn’t seem too far-fetched in the predominantly warm-climate country.
Johannesburg and Cape Town would serve as the two most likely cities for a potential MLB game, with both locations known as cosmopolitan areas with robust tourism industries.
3. Dominican Republic
The most obvious inclusion on this list, the Dominican Republic has long been a baseball hotbed with an MLB presence that continues to increase to this day.
Having produced a total of 936 MLB players over the course of the league’s history as of the end of the 2025 season, no country outside the U.S. has sent more players to The Show than the D.R., the homeland of many of the sport’s biggest names in recent memory.
Unlike potential games in Italy and South Africa, the focus for a series in the Dominican Republic would be less about expanding the sport’s popularity and more about finally meeting fans and future players where they are, bringing MLB action to a location that is responsible for so much of it.
The most significant barrier to an MLB series in the country would be a facility fit for the games, with the largest stadium in the country in Santiago only seating just over 18,000 fans. Yet with this not exactly seen as a barrier for the league in the Field of Dreams games played in Iowa, it’s certainly feasible to see the league simply making it work.
A series like this would almost certainly have to be played during the beginning of the season as well, in an effort to avoid possible hurricanes in the late summer and early fall while also trying to skip out on the worst of the area’s wet season, adding dangerous humidity to the searing heat.
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