In an expected revival of an event that was canceled several years ago, the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks are in discussions with Major League Baseball to play a regular-season series in Mexico City in 2026, industry sources told The Athletic. Team and league officials declined to comment Tuesday, saying that next year’s international schedule is not yet official.
The Padres and Diamondbacks had been set to meet in a historic two-game series at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú in April 2020. MLB called off the series that March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three years later, in 2023, the Padres and San Francisco Giants played the first major-league regular-season games in Mexico City, with San Diego sweeping a two-game series that was largely hailed as a successful international showcase. In 2024, the Houston Astros and Colorado Rockies also played a two-game series at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, which bears the name of Mexican businessman and Padres part-owner Alfredo Harp Helú.
A return to the venue would mark the Padres’ sixth regular-season series played wholly or partially outside the United States. (Most recently, the Padres opened the 2024 season with two games against the Los Angeles Dodgers in South Korea, which had never hosted regular-season major-league competition.) The first and last time the Diamondbacks played international games that counted, they faced the Dodgers in Sydney, Australia, to start the 2014 season.
Mexico has been the most frequent locale for the so-called MLB World Tour; big-league teams have played a total of five regular-season series south of the border. The MLB World Tour’s lone stop this season was the Tokyo Dome in Japan, where the Dodgers and Chicago Cubs met for the league’s opening series.
The 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement limits teams to no more than three regular-season international or special domestic events during the term of the CBA. The Padres and Dodgers each have participated in two such events.
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