MLB CBA negotiations timeline: Where things stand as Dec. 1 expiration creeps closer

With a potential work stoppage looming in baseball, we’re keeping tabs on all the major steps in negotiations

With a potential work stoppage looming in baseball, we As the 2026 Major League Baseball season continues to unfold, something vitally important to the future of the sport quietly hums in the background: the ongoing negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. The collective bargaining agreement, or CBA (or Basic Agreement, as it's known in a formal sense), is the negotiated accord between players and clubs — i.e., the team owners and commissioner Rob Manfred, who represents their interests — that governs the working relationship between the two parties, typically for a period of five years. It covers things as mundane as players' meal allowances and travel protocols and as vital as minimum salaries, the structure of free agency, revenue-sharing specifics, and roster sizes.

Every CBA can be distilled down to a fight over money, or, more specifically, how the league's revenues will be divided between players and team owners. The first CBA covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons and was the first in professional sports history. That was the handiwork of Marvin Miller, the pioneering head of the Players Association (i.e., the players union) and belated Hall of Famer. It was Miller's organizing skills, foresight, and training as a union economist that allowed him to make the Players Association a viable and effective labor organization. Every CBA negotiation from