NEW YORK — The Los Angeles Dodgers will open Major League Baseball’s 2025 season on March 18 in Tokyo — taking superstar Shohei Ohtani back home to Japan — where they will be facing the Chicago Cubs, the same team that on March 31 will visit the Athletics as they start the home portion of their first season in Sacramento, California, a layover on their multiyear journey from Oakland to Las Vegas.
All 30 teams are scheduled to play on March 27, marking the earliest opening day other than international games, MLB announced Thursday in revealing next year’s regular-season schedule. There were games on March 28 in 2019 and this season.
Each team will play six games against its prime interleague rival instead of four, increasing matchups between the Dodgers and the Los Angeles Angels, the Cubs and the Chicago White Sox, the New York Mets and the New York Yankees and the Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. What MLB has billed as “Rivalry Weekend” is scheduled for May 16-18 and includes those prime interleague rivalries, along with the Atlanta Braves versus the Boston Red Sox, the Arizona Diamondbacks versus the Colorado Rockies, the Detroit Tigers versus the Toronto Blue Jays, the Houston Astros versus the Texas Rangers, and the Philadelphia Phillies versus the Pittsburgh Pirates, among other matchups.
In the third straight season of a return to a balanced schedule, a team will play 13 games against each division rival and six or seven against each other club in its league for a total of 62. The remaining 48 games are against interleague opponents, with a single three-game series against each of the 14 other clubs in the opposite league. Teams will be home against the same interleague opponents they hosted in 2023.
The American League used a balanced schedule from 1977 to 2000, and the National League did so from 1993 to 2000.
The Cubs and the Dodgers will play at the Tokyo Dome on March 18-19, marking the 25th anniversary of the Cubs and the Mets playing MLB’s first regular-season games in Japan. Other Tokyo openers were the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays (2004), the Athletics and the Red Sox (2008), and the Athletics and the Seattle Mariners twice (2012, 2019). The Dodgers and the San Diego Padres started this season in Seoul, South Korea.
The Braves will open the 2025 season with back-to-back series in California, with four games against the Padres from March 27-30 and three against the Dodgers from March 31 to April 2. Atlanta’s home opener is April 4 against the Miami Marlins, the start of a three-game series at Truist Park. Atlanta will also host the MLB All-Star Game on July 15.
The regular season is set to end on Sept. 28.
MLB and the players’ union intended to play regular-season games in Paris next June but abandoned the plan because they couldn’t find a sponsor. The collective bargaining agreement also called for September 2025 games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but none were included.
After playing in Oakland at the Coliseum since 1968, the Athletics intend to spend the 2025-27 seasons at Sutter Health Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A River Cats and a ballpark with a capacity of about 10,500 fixed seats. The A’s open with a four-game series against the Mariners in Seattle before hosting the Cubs. They play the Giants at San Francisco’s Oracle Park from May 16-18 and host the Giants from July 4-6.
The A’s franchise started in Philadelphia (1901-54) and moved to Kansas City for 13 seasons before heading to California. The team has announced plans to move to a new ballpark in Las Vegas starting in 2028.
The daytime high temperatures in Sacramento often exceed 100 degrees in the summer, and artificial turf is being installed to accommodate both the A’s and the River Cats.