The 2026 T-Mobile Home Run Derby arrives with a different feel across the board: a new eight-man field, a new format, and a new home on Netflix.
The action is set for tonight at 8 p.m. ET from Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, where the Derby will be streamed live for the first time on Netflix.
This year’s group of sluggers features Junior Caminero of the Rays, Jac Caglianone of the Royals, Ben Rice of the Yankees, Willson Contreras of the Red Sox, Jordan Walker of the Cardinals, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies, and Munetaka Murakami of the White Sox.
The format has also been overhauled. The timed rounds that have been part of the event since 2015 are gone.
Instead, each hitter gets a set number of swings: 20 in the opening round, then 15 in the semifinals and 15 again in the final round. Every swing counts, whether it leaves the yard or not.
There is one wrinkle, though: if a player homers on his final swing of a round, he can keep going until he misses one.
After the first round, the four players with the most homers move on. They’ll be seeded by their first-round totals and paired off head-to-head - No. 1 against No. 4 and No. 2 against No. 3 - to decide the two finalists.
If the first round ends in a tie, distance breaks it, with the longest homer from the tied players sending one hitter through. In the semifinals and finals, ties go to three-swing swing-offs until somebody wins.
Philadelphia has hosted the Derby once before, back in 1996 at Veterans Stadium. That event featured 10 competitors for the first time and came down to Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, two of the game’s biggest power bats. Bonds led the semis with 10 homers, McGwire had nine, and in the final round Bonds erased a two-homer deficit with one out left by going deep on three straight swings to claim his only Derby crown.
Last year’s event produced its own memorable finish. Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, who had predicted at age 8 that he would one day win the Derby, did exactly that 20 years later by beating Caminero 18-15 in the final at Truist Park in Atlanta. Raleigh’s run was nearly over in the opening round, but he survived on a longest-homer tiebreaker by less than an inch.
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