How To Watch The 2026 World Series

It’s time once again for the World Series! This marks the 122nd fall classic, and 87 years of televised baseball. This year promises to be historic, as it features two teams that have never won one before. The 162-game regular season and a month’s worth of playoffs have brought us to one final series to determine who’s walking away as champions of the baseball world.

The Milwaukee Brewers march into the World Series after posting the best record in all of baseball for the second year in a row. Whereas last year they fell to the Dodgers in the NLCS, this year they left no room for doubt, sweeping Los Angeles and advancing to the World Series having lost only one playoff game so far. It’s their first time back in the World Series in 44 years. Sadly, longtime Brewers announcer Bob Uecker did not live long enough to see it happen.

The Tampa Bay Rays are in the playoffs again for the first time since 2021, when they were bounced out of the ALDS by the Boston Red Sox, three games to one. The Rays come in this year as AL East Division champions, which is something they also last accomplished in 2021. This year, they also ended with the best record in the American League. They’re making their third trip to the World Series and first since 2020.

Who is playing in the 2026 World Series?

This year marks a very unusual World Series, because it’s the first time since 1980 that neither of the teams has won a World Series before. Forty-six years ago, it was the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals who went toe to toe. In that series, the Phillies fought off the Royals four games to two to claim their first-ever World Series.

This time around, it’s the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays, two franchises that took very different roads to get here. The Brewers started out life as a very different franchise. In 1969, they began play as the Seattle Pilots, where they lasted just one season. The team relocated to Milwaukee, changed its name, and began play in the American League West Division. 

In 1997, the team was moved to the National League Central Division to balance out the two leagues following the addition of two new teams, including Tampa Bay, who started out as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Since coming into existence, Tampa Bay has spent its entire life in the American League East Division.

Even though neither team has won a World Series in the past, both teams have come close. In 1982, Milwaukee won the AL pennant but lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. The Rays, meanwhile, have been to the World Series twice but lost to the Phillies in 2008 and the Dodgers in 2020.

When does the 2026 World Series start?

Both the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays have had a few days off to rest before the World Series finally gets underway tonight. Game 1 will take place this evening, October 23 at 8:00 p.m. ET, at American Family Field in Milwaukee, where the Brewers are 4-0 this postseason.

Milwaukee will be going with their ace in the first game, giving the ball to Jacob Misiorowski, who led all of baseball with a 1.80 ERA, 252 strikeouts, and a 0.80 WHIP while finishing with a 16-5 record on the season. After initially announcing Drew Rasmussen, the Rays will instead counter with Nick Martinez, who went 15-6 on the season and, in his last time out, held Cleveland to just two hits and one run in five-and-a-third innings pitched.

The timing of the series will bring the “rest versus rust” debate back to the forefront again. The Brewers last played a game on Thursday, October 15, giving them seven full days off with no games. The Rays, on the other hand, closed out their series against the Cleveland Guardians on Monday night, giving them only three days of rest. Both teams had enough of a break to set up their pitching staffs, but the question remains: Will the Brewers’ extra time off have them well rested and ready to go? Or will not playing a game in over a week leave them a few steps behind the Rays?

What is the 2026 World Series schedule?

Now that the teams are set, we know where and when every game in the 2026 World Series will be played. Following Game 1 tonight, Game 2 will be played tomorrow, Saturday, October 24, also in Milwaukee. From there, the series will shift to Tampa, Florida, for the next three games. All games are slated to begin at 8 p.m. ET.

Following a day off for travel, Game 3 will be played at Tropicana Field on Monday, October 26. Game 4 will be played on Tuesday, October 27, and from there, the rest of the schedule will be marked “as necessary” depending on how the series goes. If Game 5 needs to be played, it’ll take place on Wednesday, October 28, wrapping up the Florida portion of the World Series. 

If five games isn’t enough to crown a champion, the series will shift back to Milwaukee for the final two games. After a day off for travel, Game 6 will be played on Friday, October 30. If the World Series is all tied up after six games, the seventh and deciding game will be played on Halloween night, Saturday, October 31. 

If you plan on watching the World Series on television, you can find all the games on Fox. If streaming is more your speed, you can catch all the action on Fox One or MLB.TV. If you want to follow any of the game action on the radio, you’ll find the games on ESPN Radio.

Who is favored to win the 2026 World Series?

On paper, the 2026 World Series looks to be a fairly evenly matched contest. The Tampa Bay Rays finished with the best record in the American League while the Milwaukee Brewers finished with the best record in the National League. Both teams come into the series with explosive offenses, solid starting rotations, and deep bullpens. So which team might have an advantage moving forward?

Most experts believe the Brewers have a slight advantage here, as they are the betting favorites at -165, with the Rays considered underdogs by the narrowest of margins at +145 The Brewers are being given the edge thanks to their extra days of rest and their tenacious lineup, which works a lot of walks and doesn’t swing and miss very often. Their bullpen has also been the best in baseball since the playoffs began

The Rays, meanwhile, have ridden their top three starting pitchers deep into games so far this postseason, meaning their bullpen is well rested and ready to be used in situational matchups the minute they’re called upon. Rays pitchers will be facing their toughest test of the playoffs so far, however, as the Brewers have one of the best offenses in baseball, led by NLCS MVP Jake Bauers and longtime Brewer Christian Yelich.

What happened in the 2025 World Series?

The 2025 World Series will go down in history as one of the most closely contested, exciting series to date. In one corner, you had the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who strolled to a National League pennant losing only one game in the process. On the other side, you had the Toronto Blue Jays, a scrappy, free-swinging team that needed seven games to claim the ALCS over the Seattle Mariners, and who hadn’t won a World Series since 1993.

After the Blue Jays delivered an 11-4 pounding in Game 1, the Dodgers bounced back, winning the next two games, including an 18-inning win in Game 3, seemingly taking a stranglehold on the series. But the Blue Jays returned the favor, winning Games 4 and 5 and putting themselves within one victory of taking the title. In Game 6, the Dodgers survived a furious ninth-inning rally by Toronto to take a 3-1 win and set up a Game 7 for the ages.

In that Game 7, the Blue Jays cobbled together a 4-3 lead going into the ninth inning, but they surrendered a game-tying home run to Miguel Rojas. In the bottom of the inning, the Blue Jays loaded the bases but couldn’t push a run across. In the 11th inning, Will Smith hit a solo home run to put the Dodgers ahead, and then Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched around one final Toronto rally to secure the win for Los Angeles.