The quarterfinals of the 2026 Summer Koshien tournament are here! All games take place on August 18th local time. I've translated the bracket and wrote a profile on each school that has made it to the final eight, out of an initial 49 schools.
Sendai Ikuei outfielder Matoi Tayama after launching a solo home run against Sapporo Nihon Univ.
Yokohama ace and newly minted Koshien record-holder for fastest pitch, Shōki Oda
Who will make it to the semifinals and beyond? Give me your predictions below!
The 108th Japanese National High School Baseball Championship, also known as Summer Koshien, is upon us! The opening ceremony and first game take place on August 5th. All games are streamed for free, with no geographic restrictions or required account creation here: https://vk.sportsbull.jp/koshien/
Koshien is more than just Japan's most popular sporting event. It is a cultural phenomenon and national obsession, and to help interested non-Japanese fans follow along I've translated the bracket and written a guide below!
Koshien is a single-elimination bracket-style tournament. Due to the odd number of teams (49) that participate (more on that below), 15 teams get a first-round bye while the remaining 34 play an extra game, whittling the field down to an even 32 after the first round. A school's position in the bracket is determined by random drawing, which took place on August 1st. After the first three rounds take place, a new random drawing is held for the remaining eight teams to determine the bracket for the quarterfinals and onward.
Some notes about the graphic:
The opening ceremony of the 105th edition of Summer Koshien
The tournament takes place at the most sacred site in Japanese baseball, Hanshin Koshien Stadium (阪神甲子園球場). It is located near Kobe, in Hyōgo Prefecture. The ballpark opened in 1924, purpose-built to host the national high school baseball tournament, which got its start back in 1915 (15 years before the first World Cup!). Koshien has seating for a maximum of 47,359 fans, putting it up there with the largest MLB parks (and these seats will sell out in the latter stages of the tournament). Nowadays, it also serves as the home of the NPB's Hanshin Tigers. However, the high school tournaments always take priority, and thus the Tigers are evicted from their own ballpark for a month every August. During this time, the Tigers play their home games at nearby Kyocera Dome, home of the Orix Buffaloes. I suppose the American equivalent would be to kick the Yankees out of Yankee Stadium and force them to share Citi Field with the Mets for a month — all so that high schoolers can play ball.
I indeed was! There are actually two "Koshien" tournaments every year. Summer Koshien is the older and more prestigious tournament (this year is the 108th edition), with a grueling qualification process described below.
The National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament, more commonly known as Spring Koshien or just Senbatsu (lit. "selection") is an annual invitational tournament held at Koshien Stadium that saw its 98th edition take place this past March. The qualification process for this tournament is based on the results of the previous year's fall tournaments. After the summer tournament concludes, the seniors retire (this is why the summer tournaments are such a big deal) and new teams are formed with first and second-year players (Japan has a three-year high school system). The champions and runners-up of the 10 regional tournaments are guaranteed selection, and from there a selection committee will round out the field of 32 teams with regional semifinalists based on their performance. There are additional special slots — but that's neither here nor there. If you're curious, check out Wikipedia.
The Summer Koshien tournament consists of 49 schools, whittled down from a total of 3,363 teams that registered with the Japanese High School Baseball Federation for this year's prefectural tournaments (3,662 total schools are participating, with some schools teaming up to form combined teams when they don't have enough players to field a team on their own). Each of the 47 prefectures gets one representative school, with the exception of Tokyo and Hokkaido, which get split into East/West Tokyo and North/South Hokkaido because of their sheer size.
Schools qualify by winning their prefectural/regional tournaments, which are themselves single-elimination tournaments. Part of the magic of Koshien is just how unlikely a given school is to even make the tournament. The largest regional tournaments this year were Aichi (174 teams), Kanagawa (172 teams), and Osaka (153 teams). That means a school from Aichi has to win as many as 7-8 games in a row against progressively harder opponents just to make the dance! To win it all, they may have to win as many as 14 in a row, the last 5-6 at Koshien against fellow prefectural champions. But the beauty of it is, someone has to win it.
On the flip side, the number of teams participating is on a downward trend that will not stop anytime soon, following Japan's shrinking population. In total, 33 fewer teams (counting all prefectural tournaments) are participating this year compared to 2025. Rural prefectures have been hit especially hard. The smallest tournaments this year were Tottori (21 teams), Kōchi (24 teams), and Fukui (27 teams). This does make the qualification process for a school like Tottori Jōhoku (Tottori champions three years in a row) significantly easier than a school like Yokohama (kings of Kanagawa, 172 teams, for the second year running).
This is not at all meant to be a definitive ranking. You never know what might happen in a single-elimination tournament, especially in a sport with as much inherent randomness as baseball, but here is an introduction to a handful of schools with recent history of success.
Ace of the Diamond:
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Hanamaki Higashi's slugging third baseman Daito Furuki. He plays with a wood bat.
Position players:
At Koshien, there is no seeding involved in the bracket. All games are picked by lottery. As a result, there is the potential for some exciting first-round matchups, and is that ever true this year.
Up until this year, Japanese high school baseball was old-school, with the pitcher hitting for himself. Starting from the Spring 2026 tournaments, along with the Tokyo Six Colleges Federation and the Kansai Student Baseball Federation, the Japanese High School Baseball Federation (Kōyaren) decided to introduce the designated hitter. The stated aims for the introduction are to reduce the workload of the starting pitcher (and thus the risk of injury and heatstroke), and to increase the opportunities for bench players.
The rules are the exact same as MLB's rule 5.11. For many teams, their best pitchers are also their best athletes overall and will play multiple positions. Therefore, relief pitchers will often start in another defensive position. As such, it is worth going over when the DH is forfeited, as we will likely see a much greater willingness to do so compared to MLB:
Just like in MLB, the "Ohtani rule" is in place. A pitcher can start as his own DH, and can remain in the game as either the pitcher or the DH should a relief pitcher or pinch-hitter be sent in for either role. A single player cannot replace both roles; for example, "Yamaguchi" cannot replace "Ohtani" as both the pitcher and the DH.
Players and umpires bow before a game in 2017
Before and after every game, a series of time-honored traditions unfolds that has no real equivalent in American baseball.
The first of these is the pre-game greeting. Before the game starts, the 20 players from each team will rush from their respective dugout and line up at home plate, facing each other. Together with the umpiring crew, both teams bow to one another before the game begins. This ceremony is written into the tournament regulations and dates back to the very first national championship in 1915, back when it was known as the National Middle School Baseball Championship (the modern format, the National High School Baseball Championship, began in 1948). The same ceremony is repeated immediately after the game ends.
The pre- and post-game greetings are accompanied by the iconic wail of Koshien Stadium's siren. Koshien Stadium uses a motor-driven siren. It is the same type of siren that was used for air-raid warning systems, and is still used today in many places to warn of extreme weather events. The siren was initially used for practical reasons; it let stadium staff and the next group of players know that the game was over so the next could begin preparing to take the field. With a modern PA system, this has long become obsolete, but the siren has been preserved as part of the tournament's tradition.
After the post-game greeting ceremony concludes, both teams line up in front of their dugouts and the victorious school’s alma mater is played over the stadium speakers. Most school songs share a similar stately feel, but Kyoto International’s drew widespread attention during its 2024 championship run because it is sung in Korean.
For the defeated team, perhaps Koshien's most iconic tradition then begins. The eliminated players will kneel on the infield, usually in tears, and collect handfuls of Koshien's famous black dirt to take home as a keepsake. It serves as a bittersweet reminder that just making the tournament is a huge achievement that only a tiny percentage of kyūji (youth baseball players) will ever get to experience. The raw emotion displayed by players on both the victorious and the defeated teams are a big reason why millions, including myself, are captivated by this tournament every summer.
Hōtoku non-roster players and students at the 2024 Spring Koshien tournament
What sets Koshien games apart the most from the typical American baseball experience is the cheering and the bands.
Each team has a designated section along the first and third base lines near the foul poles known as the "Alps stands," or just the "Alps." The roar of a team's supporters from the Alps combined with numbers from their band make for a viewing experience completely unique to your typical MLB broadcast. The atmosphere is more like an SEC football game than what most Americans associate with baseball. The two teams' supporters take turns cheering during their respective team's at-bats. You certainly don't need to understand Japanese to feel their energy. Absolutely no corny-ass piped-in "everybody clap your hands!" here.
Cheering transcends school identity and evokes prefectural pride. Last year, Ayaha defeated local powerhouses Ōmi and Shiga Academy in the Shiga Prefecture tournament to make their Koshien debut. Despite the brutal nature of their semifinals loss (Ayaha trailed by two entering the 9th and scored four in that frame to secure the comeback), Ōmi sent their band and cheerleading squad to Koshien in a show of goodwill to support the debutants.
Oftentimes, I'll root for the team with the better band. The bands are one of my favorite elements of Koshien, and boy do they go HARD. I will introduce some of my favorites from recent tournaments. I tried to include links of videos and not just audio recordings despite the poorer audio quality since seeing the energy of the supporters is half the fun.
Speaking of traditional cheer songs, here are some that nearly every school will play at least a few of:
Kendai Takasaki's cheer team is famous for their members who wear traditional hakama to Koshien
In addition to the bands, the cheers are typically led by a cheer team formed from non-roster players (a school is allowed 20 players on their official roster, so the rest of the club members must watch from the stands). The goofier the dancing, the better. Shiga Academy's non-roster players went viral for this.
It is plenty fun to just watch the games as a neutral fan. But for those looking to support the underdogs, root for the public schools!
Public schools have the odds stacked against them due to the vast advantages that their private counterparts have in recruiting and financial resources. While top public schools can usually attract the best players from its prefecture, the best private schools will send scouts around the country to recruit promising middle schoolers. As the decades have passed, that gap has only widened, and the advantages enjoyed by private schools have become an increasingly controversial topic among fans.
As an example, let's take a look at Kendai Takasaki, the Gunma Prefecture champions three years running. They have used a national recruiting strategy to quickly establish themselves as a top program, with their six Summer Koshien qualifications coming since 2011. Of this year's starting nine, only three went to middle school in Gunma. Including the full 20-man official roster, only five went to middle school in Gunma. A look into other historically successful schools tells a similar story: Kamimura Academy (3/20 from Kagoshima), Hanamaki Higashi (7/20 from Iwate), Yokohama (8/20 from Kanagawa, but none of their starting nine)... you get the idea.
Meanwhile, the public school champion has become a critically endangered species. Only one public school has won Koshien in the 21st century, Saga Kita in 2007. Down 4-0 to Kōryō (Hiroshima Prefecture), Saga stormed back with a five-run bottom of the 8th, which included a go-ahead grand slam by third baseman Hiroshi Soejima. Seihō of Nagasaki Prefecture was the last public school to win Spring Koshien, back in 2009.
Public schools may be down, but they're certainly not out! Last year, Gifu Commercial made a Cinderella (if you can call it that, as they're still a powerhouse with a whopping 31 appearances and one championship) run to an eventual semifinals loss, defeating heavy pre-tournament favorite and known producer of NPB talent Yokohama Academy along the way in an extra-innings thriller. In the underdog spirit of gekokujō (下剋上), let us root for the public schools!
The nine public schools that qualified for this year's tournament are:
Understandably, the time differences (Japan Time is 16 hours ahead of PDT and 13 hours ahead of EDT) can make it hard to watch games live for those of us in the Western Hemisphere. Usually, the first games are held from 8 am (an anti heat-stroke measure) local time, which actually conveniently makes for prime time viewing at 4 pm PDT / 7 pm EDT in the US. But even I'm not crazy enough to stay up for the afternoon games. SportsBull does post full match replays and match highlights to their site, so that is another option. In addition, I will try to post highlights to Reddit as the tournament goes on.
For those who want to explore deeper, here are some links to official and unofficial sites that have a bunch of bonus content. The downside that these sites are in Japanese. I tried messing with my browser's auto-translate feature and that makes it manageable in most cases.
