Baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics


will be featured at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, for the first time since the 2008 Summer Olympics. Six national teams will compete in the tournament. Israel, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea have qualified so far. Baseball/softball is one of five sports that were added to the program of the 2020 Summer Olympics only; there is no guarantee it will return in 2024.
It was originally scheduled to be held in 2020, but on 24 March 2020, the Olympics were postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualification

Six national teams will qualify for the Olympic baseball tournament. The sport is under the auspices of the World Baseball Softball Confederation. Japan automatically qualified, as Japan is the host nation.
Israel qualified, by winning the September 2019 Europe/Africa continental tournament.
Two teams qualified through the 2019 WBSC Premier12 tournament in November 2019. South Korea qualified as the best-placed team from the Asia/Oceania region, while Mexico qualified as the best-placed team from the Americas. Another American team will qualify through an Americas continental tournament that was originally scheduled to take place in March 2020, but which was postponed to a date to be determined because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The final spot will be awarded in a world final qualification tournament.

Competition schedule

GSGroup stageFFinals

Team squads

Competition format

The small number of teams in the tournament resulted in an unusual competition format being adopted that will feature 16 games. There will be an opening group round-robin round, and a modified double-elimination bracket.
For the group round, there will be two pools of three teams each. Each team will play the other two teams in its pool once. A total of six games will be played in the group round.
In the knockout round, the first three games will feature teams that each finished in the same position in their respective pools. The loser of the A3 vs. B3 game will be eliminated. Otherwise, play will continue in double-elimination format until there is one team left in each of the winners and losers brackets. Those two teams will play in the gold medal game. The last two teams eliminated from the losers bracket will play in the bronze medal game. In total, 10 games will be played in the knockout round:
  1. A3 vs B3
  2. A2 vs B2
  3. Winner of #1 vs Winner of #2
  4. A1 vs B1
  5. Loser of #2 vs Loser of #3
  6. Loser of #4 vs Winner of #5
  7. Winner of #3 vs Winner of #4
  8. Loser of #7 vs Winner of #6
  9. Bronze medal game: Loser of #6 vs Loser of #8
  10. Gold medal game: Winner of #7 vs. Winner of #8
Thus, the best two teams from group play face each other in the quarterfinals, with a possible rematch later in the tournament.