2025 Dodgers Schedule: Ohtani, Yamamoto homecomings set with Tokyo Series vs. Cubs

With an unceremonious mid-day information drop, key dates for the 2025 MLB season have been set. Things are mostly standard: league-wide Opening Day will take place on March 27, All-Star Week will begin in Atlanta on July 15, and the season will end on Sept. 28. There are, however, a couple of exciting new additions. Rivalry Weekend from May 16-18 will see interleague rivals (for LA fans, that's the Dodgers and Angels) face off all across baseball.

The Dodgers will also be headed abroad for the second year in a row, with MLB confirming the long-rumored Dodgers-Cubs series in Tokyo, set for March 18 and 19 at the Tokyo Dome.

Dodgers-Cubs makes all the sense in the world for a Japan series. Both teams have two major Japanese stars — Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the Dodgers, Seiya Suzuki and Shōta Imanaga for the Cubs — and MLB is obviously looking to feed their massive fanbase in Japan that's only growing with every new MLB player exported from NPB.

Ohtani and Yamamoto are no strangers to the Tokyo Dome. They were both part of Japan's 2023 World Baseball Classic team and defeated the Chinese, South Korean, Czech, Australian, and Italian national teams on the way to Japan's third WBC title.

2025 MLB schedule confirms Dodgers-Cubs matchup in Tokyo Series to kick off the season

During the 2023 WBC, Ohtani famously almost hit himself in billboard-form while crushing a 448 foot homer against Australia. In 2016, during a game against the Netherlands, he hit a ball so hard that it tore through the cover at the Dome. Both he and Yamamoto also competed in the Tokyo Dome throughout their NPB careers when visiting the resident Yomiuri Giants.

Exhibition games like the Dodgers' against the KBO's Kiwoom Heroes and Team Korea this season have yet to be announced for the Tokyo Series. However, there is a chance that the Dodgers could see either Ohtani or Yamamoto's former teammates on the Nippon-Ham Fighters or Orix Buffaloes, or even face NPB pitching phenom Roki Sasaki's Chiba Lotte Marines.

A Tokyo Series involving the Dodgers was a bit of a no-brainer for MLB, but it's still exciting that we have confirmation. If the Dodgers thought that the greeting they got in Seoul this year was warm, then they'll enter another stratosphere in Tokyo.