Will Women’s Pro Baseball League Have a Team in Illinois?

Tryouts for the new Women’s Pro Baseball League are this weekend in Washington D.C. The number of teams will be revealed at the draft that will follow in October.

Women's Pro Baseball returns May 2026

For the first WPBL season teams will play a four week regular season followed by playoffs. Each team will have approximately 15 players, and the teams will play initially at a couple different venues. It remains to be seen if these teams will be associated with specific American cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City or Milwaukee. Or- if they will just have team nicknames that they play under to start. Stay tuned.

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This will be the first women’s pro baseball league in the USA since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League which lasted from 1943-1954 and had teams located in Rockford, Illinois – Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin and South bend, Indiana. Think “A League of Their Own”. That movie was based on the AAGPBL. Illinois cities that eventually had pro women’s baseball included: Rockford, Chicago, Peoria and Springfield.

Depending on how well the Women’s Pro Baseball League is received it may be a slow build to city affiliations across the country, or it may take off and begin building quickly. Women’s pro sports leagues already exist for basketball – WNBA, hockey – PWHL, soccer – NWSL, and a few for football – WNFC – AWFL – and the WFA. Baseball is the last piece of this women’s pro sports puzzle. It all starts in May 2026.