MLB Lockout 101: Everything to know about baseball's likely upcoming work stoppage

The World Series is over, the Brewers are champions and an MLB lockout is very likely coming in early December The 2026 Major League Baseball season is over, and the Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time. The Brewers finished off the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night in Game 5 of the 2026 World Series. MLB Opening Day for 2027 is scheduled for March 24. But whether fans are watching baseball again or not in less than five months is very much up in the air. Major League Baseball's players and owners are in the process of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, or CBA. The CBA is the accord that governs the working relationship between the players, as represented by their union, the MLBPA, and the clubs.

It covers pretty much every aspect of that relationship that you can imagine, all the way from the overarching salary and payroll structure to daily meal money and days off during the season. Not surprisingly, it's the economic platform of the game that's the toughest to negotiate because that is always, in essence, a fight over money, or how the league's substantial revenues will be divided up between teams and players. That's keenly relevant right now because players and owners are sparring over whether or not MLB will