World Baseball Classic
| Most recent season or competition: 2026 World Baseball Classic | |
 | |
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | May 11, 2005 |
| First season | 2006 |
| President | Jim Small |
| Organising body | |
| No. of teams | 20 |
| Region | International |
Most recent champion |  Venezuela (1st title) (2026) |
| Most titles | Japan (3 titles) |
| Website | WorldBaseballClassic.com |
The World Baseball Classic (WBC), also referred to as the World Classic is a quadrennial international baseball tournament sanctioned by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the sport's global governing body, and organized by World Baseball Classic Inc., a partnership of the WBSC and Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), also in the U.S. It is one of the two main adult baseball tournaments sanctioned by the WBSC, alongside the WBSC Premier12, but the only one to grant the winner the title of "world champion".
After a three-year gap between the first two installments of the tournament, plans were made for the WBC to be repeated every four years following the 2009 event. The 2021 event was delayed to 2023 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; the 2026 event proceeded as originally scheduled. It was the first major international sporting competition won by Venezuela since the 1945 Amateur World Series, and the second time in Latin America. Japan is the only team to win the tournament multiple times, with back-to-back wins in 2006 and 2009, and a third win at the 2023 tournament.
The tournament is the first of its kind to have national teams featuring their best professional players from the top-level major leagues around the world, including MLB in the U.S. and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) in Japan. In addition to providing a format for the best baseball players in the world to compete against one another while representing their home countries, the WBC was created in order to further promote the game around the globe.
| WBSC Championships | |
|---|---|
| Amateur World Series | |
| Baseball World Cup | |
| WBSC Premier12 | |
| World Baseball Classic | |
|
WBSC world championship since 2013 |
|
| Rank | Country | # | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 |  United States | 1,088 | 72.3% |
| #2 | Dominican Republic | 169 | 11.2% |
| #3 | Venezuela | 101 | 6.7% |
| #4 | Puerto Rico | 30 | 2% |
| #5 | Cuba | 27 | 1.8% |
| #6 |  Mexico | 17 | 1.1% |
| #7 | Canada | 14 | 0.9% |
| #8 | Colombia | 11 | 0.7% |
| #9 | Panama | 9 | 0.6% |
| #10 | Japan | 8 | 0.5% |
| #11 | South Korea | 7 | 0.5% |
| #12 | Curaçao | 5 | 0.3% |
| #13 | Australia | 3 | 0.2% |
| #14 | Multiple | 2 | 0.1% |
| #15 | Multiple | 1 | 0.1% |