(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
 Qualifiers announced for World Baseball Classic
Nederlands
 NEW YORK, New York (USA) -
On Tuesday (November 12), the organization of the World Baseball Classic announced the eight countries that will participate in the two Qualiffying Tournaments.
The sixth edition of the global event.will take place in 2026 (March 5-17)..
The Qualiffying Tournaments will be held in February and March 2025.
The first Qualifier will be organized February 21-25 in Taipei (Taiwan), where the games will be played in the Taipei Dome.
The second Qualifier is scheduled for March 2-6 in Tucson, Arizona (USA).
In each Qualifier, four teams will participate, the two best will join the sixteen teams that already qualified for the World Baseball Classic 2026.
The four countries that will play in Taiwan are host Chinese Taipei, Nicaragua, South Africa and Spain.
Playing in the Qualifier in the USA are Brazil, China, Colombia and Germany.
As mentioned, sixteen countries already secured themselves of a spot in the World Baseball Classic, based on their results in 2023.
In August, the Pool-alignments were announced.
Canada, Cuba, Panama and Puerto Rico will play in Pool A, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico and the USA have been assigned to Pool B, Australia, Czechia, Japan and South Korea will come into action in Pool C and the Dominican Republic, Israel, the Netherlands and Venezuela will meet in Pool D.
The four best teams of the Qualifiers will be divided over the four Pools.
In 2026, Pool A will be played in Estadio Hiram Bithorn in San Juan (Puerto Rico), Pool B in Daikin Park in Houston, Texas (USA), the home of Houston Astros, Pool C in the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo (Japan) and Pool D in LoanDepot Park, the home of Miami Marlins in Miami, Florida (USA).
Houston and Miami also will be the sites of the Quarter Finals.
The Semi-Finals and Final will be played in Miami.
Japan won the previous edition in 2023 after also having won the first (2006) and second (2009) Classic.
The Dominican Republic won in 2013 and the USA was the best team in 2017.
(November 12)
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