The Women’s Pro Baseball League is having its inaugural season in the summer of 2026.
It will mark the fifth professional women’s baseball league in the United States, continuing a legacy that dates to the 1940s. The first was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League which gave women athletes national visibility during and after World War II. Around the same time, the National Girls Baseball League played in Chicago and rivaled the AAGPBL in popularity, showcasing their players in a more local setting. The International Girls Baseball League followed in 1952, based primarily in Florida, and hoped to expand women’s baseball beyond regional audiences. Decades later, the Ladies League Baseball in 1997 briefly revived professional play for women, though it struggled to gain lasting traction. The launch of the new WPBL will build on these earlier efforts to establish a stable, modern era of women’s professional baseball in America.
Justine Siegal, former Major League Baseball coach and Keith Stein, Intercounty Baseball League team owner, co-founded the league in 2024 to address previous longevity issues with women’s baseball. They aim to give college and amateur players an avenue to play the sport at a professional level. As of now, no U.S. high schools or colleges offer formal girls’ baseball programs and opportunities remain limited. During the 2023–24 academic year, more than 1,300 girls played on high school baseball teams, yet only nine women competed on NCAA baseball rosters in 2024. The new league also aims to tap into market research from Major League Baseball, which found that 46% of MLB fans are women. The success of the Women’s National Basketball Association inspired the co-founders to hop on the growing wave of visibility for women’s sports and extend this reach to baseball.
The league announced New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco as the first four cities where their teams will play. These cities are known for their deeply passionate fanbases and for their deep roots in baseball. By launching teams in these historic cities, the WPBL aims to honor the sport while also introducing new competition and representation for women in cities where baseball is already thriving. Two more teams plan to play in the inaugural season and will be announced soon.
The WPBL will feature a four-week regular season beginning in May, followed by an all-star game and a two-week postseason tournament to decide the league champion. Each team will play two games per week, held between Thursday and Sunday. All WPBL games will be seven innings long and played using aluminum bats.
