For the first time in decades, women will have the chance to try out for a professional baseball league. The Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) has announced its inaugural tryouts, offering athletes the opportunity to compete for a place on one of the league’s six teams. League games will start in 2026.

Professional baseball hasn’t been available to women since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was created in 1943, when male players like Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio left to serve in World War II. The league’s story was later fictionalized in the 1992 film and the 2022 Amazon series, both titled A League of Their Own.

The disbanding of the AAGPBL in 1954 left women with no opportunities in professional baseball until now. The WPBL is the vision of Justine Siegal, the first woman to coach in Major League Baseball, and entrepreneur Keith Stein. WPBL tryouts will run from August 22 to 25 at Nationals Park and the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy in Washington, D.C. Over 600 women have registered to compete for 150 spots. Selected players will be drafted by teams in October, and the league’s first season is scheduled to launch in the spring of 2026, with teams based in the Northeast.

Siegal predicts the WPBL will create new opportunities for younger girls who want to pursue baseball. “Once the WPBL launches next year, there'll be even greater exposure to the joy of women playing baseball, and that is going to trickle down into more girls’ baseball teams forming all around the country and frankly internationally as well,” she says. For Siegal, the desire to help girls and women play baseball is personal. “When I was about 12 or 13, I was told I should go play softball, because I'm a girl, and that's the day I decided I'd play baseball forever. So for me, the more people tried to take the game away from me, the more I loved it,” she explains.