Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB)

What is NPB?

Nippon Professional Baseball is Japan’s top professional league, twelve clubs in two circuits: the Central League (Hanshin Tigers, Yokohama DeNA BayStars, Yomiuri Giants, Chunichi Dragons, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, Tokyo Yakult Swallows) and the Pacific League (Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, ORIX Buffaloes, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, Saitama Seibu Lions, Chiba Lotte Marines). Club names carry their corporate owners. It is a closed league whose players enter through the NPB Draft.^[1] [5]

How does it work?

Each club plays 143 games, including an interleague period — 26 May to 14 June in 2026 — with All-Star Games in late July. The top three in each league go to the Climax Series in October, a best-of-three first stage and a best-of-six final stage in which the pennant winner starts with a one-win advantage, and the two Climax Series winners meet in the Nippon Series, scheduled for 24 October to 1 November 2026. Clubs may carry four foreign players on the active roster. Under the NPB–MLB posting system a club may release a player to MLB for a fee scaled to his contract — 20 percent of the first USD 25m, 17.5 percent of the next 25m and 15 percent above 50m — within a 45-day negotiating window.^{[1] [5] [7]}

Since when does it exist?

Professional baseball in Japan dates from the Japanese Baseball League of 1936; the two-league system and the first Japan Series followed in 1950, and NPB’s own records run season by season from then. The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have won six of the last ten Nippon Series, the 2025 title — 4–1 over Hanshin with Hotaka Yamakawa as MVP — their twelfth. The Series winner is not always the pennant winner: in 2018, 2019 and 2024 it came through the Climax Series from second or third place.^{[3] [4] [5] [6]}

Nippon Series champions of the last ten seasons.

Why does it matter?

NPB drew 27,040,286 spectators over 858 games in 2025, 31,515 a game and a record for the second year running, with the Central League averaging 34,313. Japan is No. 1 in the WBSC world ranking and NPB has a formal posting agreement with MLB — the route by which its players reach the major leagues, and a benchmark for what a foreign top-tier league looks like.^{[2] [4] [5] [8] [9]}