Major League Baseball will not play a pair of games in London in 2026 as it previously intended, the league confirmed Wednesday. The New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays were aiming to play June 13-14 at London Stadium, home to the Premier League soccer team West Ham United.
MLB deemed it impractical to convert the field to baseball — an expensive and labor-intensive process — in the timeframe that would have been available. West Ham’s final Premier League match of the season is scheduled for May 24, 20 days before the first planned baseball game. A person briefed on the league’s international plans who was not authorized to speak publicly said that by the time MLB ultimately could gain access to the field, the logistics made playing infeasible.
The conversion process took 18 days for MLB games in London in 2024, MLB field consultant Murray Cook said last year. Conversion also required 18 days in 2023, he said, while in 2019, the process took 21 days.
“There’s 345 tons of infield clay,” Cook said a year ago. “Then you have to sort out the turf, the netting, padding, dugouts.”
Pushing the games later in the calendar, meanwhile, would be difficult for MLB’s broadcast partner FOX, which is carrying the World Cup starting June 11.
MLB will still have a large international presence in 2026 with the next installment of the World Baseball Classic tournament.
“We remain interested in Europe,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday at Tuned In, an event hosted by the outlet Front Office Sports. “We think London is an important jumping-off point for us. We have a facility that has come a long way since the first Yankee-Red Sox game, a much better ballpark now than it was due to their willingness to make investments in that. We continue to believe that there’s an opportunity there.”
The Associated Press first reported the cancellation of MLB’s 2026 London plans.
— With reports from The Athletic‘s Mike Vorkunov
(Top photo of the 2024 London Series: Alex Pantling / Getty Images)