The 2026 World Baseball Classic is officially underway, with Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) defeating Australia in the tournament’s first game, played by Pool C. 20 nations across four global venues are competing. The tournament features four pools (A, B, C, and D) with five teams each, battling in a round-robin format. The top two teams from each pool will advance to the quarterfinals and then the finals in single-elimination rounds.
The series opens with the teams playing four games to decide the top two who will then move to the quarterfinals.
In its final pool-by-pool preview, MLB released its official forecasts predicting which nations will survive the opening round.
• Pool A (Hiram Bithorn Stadium – San Juan, Puerto Rico): MLB predicts host nation Puerto Rico and Canada will advance over Colombia, Cuba, and Panama.
• Pool B (Daikin Park – Houston, Texas): MLB forecasts the United States and Mexico moving on, eliminating Brazil, Great Britain, and Italy.
• Pool C (Tokyo Dome – Tokyo, Japan): Japan and Chinese Taipei are favored to advance past Australia, Czechia, and Korea.
• Pool D (loanDepot park – Miami, Florida): MLB predicts that Venezuela and the Dominican Republic will secure the top two spots, edging out Israel, the Netherlands, and Nicaragua.
How the WBC works
In the World Baseball Classic’s first-round format, where each pool consists of five teams and every team plays exactly four games, a team can mathematically lose up to three games and still advance to the second round.
Here is how the loss scenarios break down:
Two losses (2-2 record): It is entirely realistic for a team to advance with two losses. When a pool is highly competitive and teams trade wins, multiple teams can tie for the second spot with a 2-2 record. For example, during the 2023 tournament, all five teams in Pool A famously finished with identical 2-2 records. The two teams that advanced did so with two losses each.
Three losses (1-3 record): While highly improbable, it is mathematically possible to advance with a 1-3 record. For this extreme scenario to occur, one dominant team would need to sweep the pool and go 4-0. The other four teams would then have to tie one another in a perfect circle of wins and losses, leaving all four of them tied at 1-3. The team that advances in second place would then be decided entirely by complex tiebreaker rules.
When multiple teams finish with the same number of losses, the WBC uses a strict set of tiebreakers to determine who moves on. The primary tiebreaker is the head-to-head record among the tied teams. If a multi-team tie persists, the tournament uses a formula based on the lowest quotient of runs allowed divided by defensive outs recorded in the games between the tied teams.
Once a team advances past the first round, the tournament switches entirely to a single-elimination format. A team cannot lose any games during the quarterfinals or the semifinals; a single loss eliminates them immediately.
5 March 2026