It was announced today that the Chicago Cubs will open the 2025 Major League Baseball season against the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Tokyo Dome. Those games will take place on March 18th and 19th. It makes sense to feature these two teams in Japan with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the Dodgers and Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga on the Cubs. There is no doubt the fans in Japan will be really excited to see those guys playing over there again.

The rest of the MLB schedule has not been released yet, but it is safe to assume that these two games will take place about a week ahead of the rest of the league’s Opening Day just like the games between the San Diego Padres and Dodgers in Korea this year. It will make for a shorter spring training than normal for the Cubs. You will also see some weird scheduling during the year with Chicago having a two-game jump on the rest of the league, but it won’t be that much different than when the Cubs played the St. Louis Cardinals in London during the 2023 season.

This is the third time the Cubs have been featured in a marquee game over the last four years with the Field of Dreams game in 2022, London in 2023, and now Tokyo in 2025. They are one of the biggest markets in the league. It would be really awesome if they would start spending money like it!