Predicting the World Baseball Classic champion, MVP and more

Baseball's premier international tournament is back. Twenty teams from all over the globe are set to vie for supremacy at the 2026 World Baseball Classic, starting Wednesday night ET. In the end, only one will stand tall.

How will it all play out? We put it to a vote, asking our staff to predict the pool winners, WBC champion and MVP.

Check out the results of our poll below, and make your own picks in the 2026 World Baseball Classic Bracket Challenge here by noon ET on Wednesday.

Note: Pool play features four pools of five teams battling it out in a round-robin format. The top two teams in each pool advance to the knockout stage. For each pool, we've ranked the five teams in order of votes received, with the two pool winners represented in bold.

Who will advance from Pool A?

1. Puerto Rico
2. Canada
3. Colombia
4. Cuba
5. Panama

Pool A proved the most divisive among our voters. It was the only pool without a unanimous selection and saw four teams receive double-digit votes, with Puerto Rico and Canada ultimately getting the nod over Colombia, Cuba and Panama.

Puerto Rico is absent a number of household names but still appears to be one of the top teams in the tournament as it pursues its first title. Team Canada has a good chance to advance to the knockout stage for the first time in WBC history, in part due to its favorable pool assignment but also because it has assembled more MLB talent than ever before.

Who will advance from Pool B?

1. United States
2. Mexico
3. Italy
4. Great Britain
5. Brazil

The United States returns to the World Baseball Classic with perhaps its most talented roster ever, looking to avenge its narrow loss to Japan in the 2023 championship game and take home its second WBC title. The Americans will need to take care of business in Pool B first, but our voters don’t expect that to be an issue.

Mexico and Italy both made the knockout stage at the 2023 WBC, but if the U.S. advances out of Pool B as expected, at least one of those teams will be going home early. The majority of our voters think Mexico, with a roster led by Alejandro Kirk, Jarren Duran and Randy Arozarena, will be the one to move on alongside Team USA.

Who will advance from Pool C?

1. Japan
2. Korea
3. Chinese Taipei
4. Australia
5. Czechia

The most successful team in World Baseball Classic history with three titles, Samurai Japan features 10 players who were on the country's 2023 championship-winning roster. That includes 2023 tournament MVP Shohei Ohtani, whose memorable game-ending strikeout of then-Angels teammate Mike Trout in the championship game against Team USA clinched the crown for Japan. Ohtani won’t be pulling two-way duty this time, but Japan should still be plenty formidable on both sides of the ball.

Japan was a unanimous pick to advance from Pool C, with Korea also drawing significant support. After a strong run that saw it win gold at the 2008 Olympics and advance to the finals against Japan at the World Baseball Classic one year later, the Korean national team has struggled lately, failing to advance past the first round in each of the past three WBC tournaments. They’ll look to reverse that trend in 2026.

Who will advance from Pool D?

1. Dominican Republic
2. Venezuela
3. Netherlands
4. Nicaragua
5. Israel

In sharp contrast to Pool A, this pool produced the clearest consensus of any group, with the Dominican Republic and Venezuela looking like overwhelming favorites to advance to the knockout stage. In a massive letdown, the Dominicans didn’t qualify for the quarterfinals in 2023. Nevertheless, they’ll once again enter the WBC with sky-high expectations befitting a roster loaded with some of the biggest stars in the world. No one is going to be surprised if they run the table like they did at the 2013 WBC.

But don’t sleep on the Venezuelans. They have plenty of star power, too, and will go into the 2026 WBC with added motivation after a bitter defeat against Team USA in the ’23 quarterfinals, when Trea Turner’s go-ahead grand slam in the top of the eighth inning dashed Venezuela's championship dreams.

Who will win the World Baseball Classic?

United States

Japan may have finished atop our World Baseball Classic power rankings -- they’re the defending champions and a three-time WBC winner, after all -- but our staff likes Team USA to take the crown this year. The Dominican Republic also received more votes than Japan.

It’s not hard to understand why Team USA was such a popular pick when you look at the roster the Americans have assembled. Even though Tarik Skubal will be limited to just one start, the United States’ pitching staff is much stronger than it was three years ago, with Paul Skenes, Logan Webb and Mason Miller also among the team’s newcomers on the mound.

Meanwhile, the position-player group has added Aaron Judge -- who will captain the squad in his Classic debut -- Cal Raleigh, Gunnar Henderson, Bryce Harper, Alex Bregman, Byron Buxton, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Roman Anthony. Bobby Witt Jr. also figures to play a much larger role than he did as a bench player for Team USA in 2023, having since established himself as one of the top players in the game.

Others receiving votes: Dominican Republic, Japan

Who will be named MVP of the Classic?

Bobby Witt Jr. (United States)

An American MVP aligns perfectly with our staff's Team USA championship pick. Witt over Judge is a surprise, but hardly a stretch given the shortstop’s emergence as one of baseball’s brightest stars. Witt was part of Team USA’s roster at the 2023 WBC, but with only one MLB season under his belt at the time, he sat behind some of his more experienced teammates and tallied only two at-bats in the tournament. It’s a different story this time around, with Witt positioned as an integral part of Team USA’s lineup.

Juan Soto was the top MVP vote-getter from the Dominican Republic, while Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto tied for the top spot among Japanese players in MVP polling.

Others receiving votes: Aaron Judge (United States), Juan Soto (Dominican Republic), Kyle Schwarber (United States), Paul Skenes (United States), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Dominican Republic), Shohei Ohtani (Japan), Cal Raleigh (United States), Julio Rodríguez (Dominican Republic), Fernando Tatis Jr. (Dominican Republic), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (Japan), Roman Anthony (United States), Alex Bregman (United States), Bryce Harper (United States), Kazuma Okamoto (Japan), Geraldo Perdomo (Dominican Republic)