KBO, the KBO League or Korea Baseball Organization, is South Korea's top professional baseball league, made up of 10 teams playing a single unified schedule with no divisions. It is widely regarded as one of the strongest baseball leagues outside MLB and crowns its champion each year through the Korean Series.

KBO has 10 teams, all competing in a single league table rather than being split into conferences or divisions, unlike MLB or NPB.

KBO is led by a commissioner; as of 2026, Hur Gu-yeon serves in that role, overseeing league operations and pushing initiatives to increase KBO's international competition and visibility.

KBO was founded on January 15, 1982, growing out of the Korea Professional Baseball Committee established the previous December, with six original teams: the Haitai Tigers, Lotte Giants, MBC Chungyong, OB Bears, Sammi Superstars, and Samsung Lions.

Yes, KBO uses a universal designated hitter, meaning every team uses a DH in every game, a rule MLB itself did not adopt leaguewide until 2022.

Yes. Since the 2025 season, KBO regular-season games are called a tie after the 11th inning if the score is still level, changed from the previous 12-inning cutoff, largely to protect pitcher workloads. Postseason games extend further and are only called a tie after the 15th inning.

KBO operates as one single league of 10 teams with no divisions or conferences; every team plays every other team across a balanced schedule, and postseason seeding is based purely on overall regular-season standings.

The 10 KBO teams are the Kia Tigers, Doosan Bears, Lotte Giants, NC Dinos, LG Twins, Hanwha Eagles, KT Wiz, Samsung Lions, SSG Landers, and Kiwoom Heroes.

The Kia Tigers, formerly the Haitai Tigers, have won a league-record 12 Korean Series titles, most recently in 2024, and have never lost a Korean Series they have reached.

The Samsung Lions have won eight Korean Series titles, including four consecutive championships from 2011 through 2014, the only team in KBO history to win four straight.

Yes, several current franchises trace back to renamed or transferred teams. For example, the SSG Landers were previously the SK Wyverns before e-commerce company SSG acquired the club in 2021, and the Kiwoom Heroes were previously known as the Nexen Heroes.

Yes, the Doosan Bears and LG Twins both play their home games at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul, one of the more unusual arrangements in professional baseball anywhere in the world.

Yes, most KBO franchises are owned by major South Korean conglomerates or their affiliates, such as Samsung, LG, Doosan, Hanwha, and KT, and typically carry the parent company's name as part of their branding.

Each KBO team plays 144 regular-season games, running from late March through roughly early October ahead of the postseason.

The KBO regular season generally opens in late March; the 2025 season, for example, started on March 28.

The KBO postseason runs through October, starting with the Wild Card round and building up to the Korean Series, which is typically played in late October.

KBO holds its own mid-season All-Star Game featuring the league's top players, drawing large crowds and forming part of the same festival-like atmosphere that defines KBO's regular-season games.

Yes, KBO has adjusted its calendar in past years to accommodate events such as the World Baseball Classic and Premier12, temporarily releasing players to join the national team during in-season tournament windows.

Starting with the 2026 season, KBO clubs can carry three standard import players plus one additional player from an Asian country or Australia under a new Asia quota system, and all four of those players can appear in the same game.

Introduced for 2026, the Asia quota lets each KBO team add one more foreign player specifically from a country affiliated with the Baseball Federation of Asia or from Australia, on top of the standard three import players, with that player's total cost capped at 200,000 dollars in combined salary, signing bonus, and buyout fees.

Yes, KBO uses video review for close and disputed calls, following the broader trend across major professional baseball leagues worldwide.

Every KBO team employs professional cheerleaders and a cheer captain who lead coordinated chants, songs, and dances for the entire game using stadium sound systems, creating a concert-like atmosphere. One observer has compared MLB to an opera and KBO games to rock and roll by comparison.

The KBO postseason uses a step-ladder format among the top five regular-season finishers. The fourth- and fifth-place teams play a Wild Card round, the winner faces the third-place team in a best-of-three Semi-Playoff, that winner faces the second-place team in a Playoff round, and the winner of that round meets the first-place regular-season team in the Korean Series.

The Wild Card round pits the fourth- and fifth-place regular-season teams against each other, with the higher-seeded fourth-place team given a built-in advantage in the round's win-based format.

The Korean Series is KBO's championship series, played between the regular season's first-place finisher and the winner of the Playoff round, deciding the league's overall champion each year.

The LG Twins won the 2025 Korean Series, defeating the Hanwha Eagles four games to one, giving the Twins their fourth championship in franchise history, following titles in 1990, 1994, and 2023.

Before 2015, only the top four teams qualified for the postseason. The league expanded to five teams that year specifically to give more clubs a realistic shot at the playoffs while still rewarding the regular-season champion with a bye straight into the Korean Series.

The KBO Rookie Draft is held annually, generally between late August and mid-September, where each of the league's 10 teams can select amateur players, largely from Korean high schools and colleges, across 11 rounds, with a full league-wide draft format in place since 2023.

A KBO player becomes eligible for posting after seven years of service in the league and can be posted during a window running from November 1 to December 5. All 30 MLB clubs then get a 30-day negotiating window, and if no deal is reached, the player returns to his KBO team for the following season.

For a Major League contract, the posting fee is 20 percent of the first 25 million dollars of guaranteed value, 17.5 percent of the next 25 million, and 15 percent of anything above 50 million dollars. For a Minor League contract, the fee is 25 percent of the player's signing bonus instead.

Ryu Hyun-jin signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers via posting before the 2013 season and later finished second in National League Cy Young voting. Kim Ha-seong signed with the San Diego Padres, and Lee Jung-hoo, a former KBO MVP, signed with the San Francisco Giants, among other notable transfers.

A player generally needs both seven years of KBO service time and his club's agreement to be posted. Without his team's consent, a player must instead wait to become a full domestic free agent under KBO's separate free agency rules.

Most KBO franchises are owned by large South Korean conglomerates or their subsidiaries, such as Samsung, LG, Doosan, Hanwha, and KT, a corporate ownership model broadly similar to Japan's NPB.

No, KBO salaries are considerably lower than MLB's, which is a major reason the posting system and eventual MLB free agency are so significant for the league's biggest stars.

Yes, international broadcasters have carried KBO games since the league gained global attention in 2020 as one of the first major baseball leagues to resume play during the COVID-19 pandemic, and streaming coverage aimed at overseas fans has continued since.

KBO relies more heavily on individual team and conglomerate sponsorship deals than MLB's more centralized national broadcasting revenue model, with ticket sales, sponsorships, and merchandise driving most club-level income.

KBO presents an annual league Most Valuable Player award to its top overall performer of the regular season, an honor that has gone to future MLB players such as Lee Jung-hoo before his posting to the San Francisco Giants.

Yes, KBO names a Rookie of the Year each season recognizing the league's best first-year player.

Yes, KBO presents its own Golden Glove Awards each year to the top performers at each position, similar in spirit to MLB's Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards combined into a single honor per position.

KBO names a Most Valuable Player for the Korean Series itself, recognizing the standout performer of the championship series each year.

Choi Jeong holds the KBO career home run record with 518, having passed longtime leader Lee Seung-yeop, who retired with 467 career home runs.

Lee Seung-yeop hit 56 home runs for Samsung in 2003, a mark that set an Asian professional baseball record at the time and remains the KBO's single-season home run record.

No pitcher has thrown a perfect game in KBO's history since the league's founding in 1982, making it a notable difference from MLB and NPB, both of which have seen multiple perfect games.

With most of the world's sports shut down early in the COVID-19 pandemic, KBO became one of the first major professional baseball leagues to resume its season, in May 2020, drawing new international broadcast deals and viewers, including live coverage on ESPN in the United States.

The Samsung Lions are one of KBO's original six franchises from 1982 and have remained under Samsung ownership since the league's founding, making them one of the most continuously stable franchises in KBO history.

South Korea's national team draws heavily on KBO talent to compete in the World Baseball Classic, where the country won the inaugural 2006 tournament and has remained one of the more competitive Asian entries in subsequent editions.

South Korea's national team, built around KBO players, regularly competes in the Premier12, an international tournament involving many of the same top baseball nations found at the World Baseball Classic, including Japan, the United States, and countries across Latin America.

Every KBO team fields professional cheerleading squads, often influenced by K-pop-style performance, who use microphones and stage setups to lead the crowd in coordinated songs and chants for the entire game, an atmosphere widely covered by international media as one of KBO's signature features.

Yes, KBO games are available through various international broadcasters and streaming platforms, a trend that expanded significantly after the league's high-profile 2020 season during the pandemic.

Yes, KBO operates the KBO Futures League, a developmental competition similar to Minor League Baseball or NPB's farm leagues, where prospects and rehabbing players compete below the top KBO level.