Women’s Pro Baseball League 2026: Why the Return of Women’s Baseball Is Long Overdue

I grew up in New England, known by those who live there as Red Sox Nation. Baseball marked the passing of the seasons, which unfolded with the slow drama of the sport. Spring meant opening day jitters, and long summer nights stretched with the highs of extra innings and late bedtime. The crisp fall air brought the World Series hum and winter was for trade speculations and Florida training camps. Red Sox radio was on during dinner, and I’d learned to keep a pitch by pitch scorecard by the time I was about 8. I spent hours of my young girlhood feeling the satisfying thunk of a baseball sinking into the webbing of my glove. But when it was time for me to sign up for a team, there were shorter pants, jerseys with fewer buttons (what is with that), and a huge yellow ball. Baseball wasn’t for girls: that’s what softball was for!

But while softball has a rich history and electric presence in the United States, they are not the same sport. There are thousands of girls and women with stories just like mine. Upwards of 40% of fans who watched or attended MLB games in 2024 were women. With the MLB boasting more than 170 million fans in the US alone, that is upwards of 68 million women and girls who are fans of baseball. Not softball, but baseball. Girls who grew up loving a game they would get to play on a big stage. Title IX lawsuits have eventually forced baseball leagues (from Little League to the Big Leagues) to allow women to take part, but the reality has been that if a woman wants real playing time or a scholarship, softball has been the path forward.

Until now.

2026 will mark the launch of the Women’s Pro Baseball League, which will be the US’s first women’s baseball league since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League ( immortalized in A League of Their Own) folded in 1954. The league will feature 4 clubs out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Boston, and run for 7 weeks, complete with playoffs and an inaugural championship. It will be the first time that young girls can look up and see players who look like them, and a league that they could someday play in. And not just girls in the United States either. With a clear focus on attracting international talent, the league has promised interpretation services as well as visas for any players coming from overseas. The league has attracted some of the biggest names in women’s baseball, and the product will undoubtedly be phenomenal.

But while the league has been heralded as a revolutionary step forward for baseball, not everyone has come on board. The league was first announced in October of 2024, and May of 2025 brought the MLB’s significant investment into the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL). I won’t pretend to know what offers were made or conversations were had behind closed doors, but with the weight of the MLB behind it, the AUSL has access to marketing resources and money that the WPBL can only dream of.

While the MLB’s investment in the AUSL is a huge milestone and deserves to be celebrated as such, it also touches on a tiresome trend in women’s sports. It seems to be yet another example of men’s sports validating and investing in women’s sports once they are already a sure thing.

Softball in the United States is beyond a sure thing.

Athletes Unlimited softball launched in 2020, and has been growing and supporting professional athletes since then. In 2023, 8.68 million people played softball in the United States, most of them women. Collegiate softball is famously more popular than college baseball, with the Softball College World Series bringing in millions of viewers.

While Athletes Unlimited is already 5+ years old, the Athletes Unlimited Softball League only launched in 2025 with the MLB’s backing. So now the MLB gets to say that they are supporting a fledgling league, which, while technically true, belies the incredible amount of work that has been put in by generations of women to make softball sustainable and profitable. When speaking on women’s baseball, MLB Chief Baseball Development Officer Tony Reagins said, "The talent pool right now is not as deep as softball... The infrastructure is not as structured.” I wonder how infrastructure gets its structure, Tony?? From money. From investment.

So where does this leave women’s baseball and the WPBL?

Starting from scratch, just like AU softball did. Just like the NWSL and the PWHL did. Starting with talented, dedicated women, who will undoubtedly prove that women’s baseball belongs, and people will pay to watch it. What frustrates me is not that the MLB has invested in softball. It should! But it should also invest in and partner with the WPBL. The MLB made a record $12.1 billion in profit last season. And, say it with me, investing in a women’s sports league isn’t charity: it’s a smart investment. Moreover, the country’s first women’s baseball league in 50 years deserves more than just lip service from its oldest baseball institution.

It doesn’t take a team of sports analysts to realize that women’s baseball is a sure thing. It doesn’t take a fortune teller to know that this league will succeed, in this form or another. Women’s sports leagues have proven over and over that they are profitable, sustainable and hugely popular. There are hundreds of thousands of girls and women in the US with real spending power who already watch baseball. We can’t wait to watch them fall in love with the women’s game.