MLB Sets March 24, 2027 Opening Night, Wrigley Field to Host All-Star Game, With No Labor Deal in Place

As the sport rides a wave of rising attendance and TV ratings coming out of the 2026 All-Star Game in Philadelphia, MLB used Thursday to unveil a 2027 schedule that assumes labor peace it does not yet have.

According to MLB's own release, the 2027 season opens with a single Netflix-streamed game on Wednesday, March 24, matchup still to be determined. Traditional Opening Day follows Thursday, March 25, with 14 games across the league, and MLB says that's the earliest traditional Opening Day in league history, excluding special season-openers and international games. The first full 15-game slate lands Saturday, March 27.

The Associated Press, via Fox Sports, published the full list of Opening Day pairings already lined up: Cleveland at the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis at Cincinnati, the White Sox at Detroit, Texas at Houston, the Mets at Miami, the Angels at Milwaukee, Toronto at the Yankees, and ten more matchups spanning every division.

Wrigley Field will host the 97th All-Star Game on Tuesday, July 13, 2027, airing exclusively on Fox, according to MLB. That makes Wrigley the third ballpark in league history, and the only active one, to host the Midsummer Classic four times, following 1947, 1962 and 1990. The Home Run Derby moves to Monday, July 12, and streams exclusively on Netflix. The Chicago Cubs' own team coverage, via Sports Illustrated, confirmed the Cubs will open at home against the Cleveland Guardians on March 25 before a quick trip to the West Coast to face the Angels and Athletics.

The season is scheduled to run through Sunday, September 26, with a second-half kickoff on ESPN July 15 opening what MLB calls its third annual Rivalry Weekend, featuring 11 interleague series.

The problem is real: the league's collective bargaining agreement with the players' union expires December 1, 2026, and a management lockout is widely expected, according to the Associated Press. There is no new deal. The sides remain far apart.

Owners have been pushing hard for a salary cap, running an ad campaign arguing the sport needs to "level the field," according to Fox News. The Miami Marlins, at a roughly $69 million payroll, have been running 12 games ahead of the roughly $370 million New York Mets this season, an example ownership points to as proof the current system is broken. The players' union has flatly rejected that framing and has said for years it will never accept a cap, arguing it exists purely to cap earnings and protect ownership profits, not to fix competitive balance.

Both sides have real arguments. Owners can fairly point to payroll disparities that create lopsided division races. Players can fairly point out that leagues with hard caps, like the NFL and NBA, still have plenty of competitive imbalance, and that a cap mainly transfers money from players to owners rather than fixing parity. Neither claim is settled by the schedule MLB released Thursday. This is a fight over how revenue gets split, dressed up as a fight over fairness.

The AP's coverage is blunt about the stakes: this is baseball's earliest opening day ever, "if there is an opening day." The last lockout, in 2021 into 2022, wasn't resolved until March 10, 2022, pushing Opening Day back a full week, from March 31 to April 7, according to the Associated