Baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics

Six national teams will qualify for the Olympic baseball tournament. The sport is under the auspices of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). Japan automatically qualified, as Japan is the host nation.

Israel qualified, by winning the September 2019 Europe/Africa continental tournament.

Two teams qualified through the 2019 WBSC Premier12 tournament in November 2019. South Korea qualified as the best-placed team from the Asia/Oceania region (other than Japan, which already qualified as host), while Mexico qualified as the best-placed team from the Americas. Another American team will qualify through an Americas continental tournament that was originally scheduled to take place in March 2020, but which was postponed to a date to be determined because of the coronavirus pandemic.[2]

The final spot will be awarded in a world final qualification tournament.[3]

Event	Date	Location	Vacancies	Qualified
Host nation	3 August 20161	N/A	1	Japan
Africa/Europe Qualifying Event	18–22 September 2019	Bologna - Parma	1	Israel
2019 WBSC Premier12	2–17 November 2019	Tokyo2	2	South Korea  Mexico
Americas Qualifying Event	TBD (postponed)[4]	Arizona	1
Final Qualifying Tournament	TBD (postponed)[5]	Taichung / Douliu	1
TOTAL			6

¹Baseball was included into the 2020 Olympics during the IOC session on 3 August 2016.
²The 2019 WBSC Premier12 was played across four countries, with a final in Tokyo.

The small number of teams in the tournament resulted in an unusual competition format being adopted that will feature 16 games. There will be an opening group round-robin round, and a modified double-elimination bracket.

For the group round, there will be two pools of three teams each. Each team will play the other two teams in its pool once. A total of six games will be played in the group round.[6]

In the knockout round, the first three games will feature teams that each finished in the same position in their respective pools (A1 vs B1, A2 vs B2, A3 vs B3). The loser of the A3 vs. B3 game will be eliminated (with only one loss). Otherwise, play will continue in double-elimination format until there is one team left in each of the winners and losers brackets. Those two teams will play in the gold medal game (a single game; the losers bracket representative does not need to beat the winners bracket representative twice). The last two teams eliminated from the losers bracket will play in the bronze medal game. In total, 10 games will be played in the knockout round:[6]

1. A3 vs B3 (loser eliminated)
2. A2 vs B2
3. Winner of #1 vs Winner of #2
4. A1 vs B1
5. Loser of #2 vs Loser of #3 (loser eliminated)
6. Loser of #4 vs Winner of #5 (loser to bronze medal game)
7. Winner of #3 vs Winner of #4 (winner to gold medal game)
8. Loser of #7 vs Winner of #6 (winner to gold medal game, loser to bronze medal game)
9. Bronze medal game: Loser of #6 vs Loser of #8
10. Gold medal game: Winner of #7 vs. Winner of #8

Thus, the best two teams from group play face each other in the quarterfinals, with a possible rematch later in the tournament (including the gold medal game, if the winner also wins its next game and the loser wins its next two).