Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts stood at a podium behind home plate at Wrigley field, flanked by city officials MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. And he recounted his experience of the 1990 All-Star Game, the most recent hosted by the team.
“I was here during the All-Star Game, but the difference between Rob’s experience and mine was I didn’t have a ticket,” he said, referencing Manfred’s revelation that the 1990 All-Star Game was the first he’d attended. “But I do remember the great energy around the ballpark that night. And hopefully this time, I’ll have a ticket to go inside.”
This time, in 2027, when Wrigley Field will host the All-Star Game for the first time in over three and a half decades. It had been an open secret for months, but Friday morning, Manfred made the official announcement that Major League Baseball had awarded the Cubs the midsummer classic.
Wrigley Field: Home of the 2027 All-Star Game. pic.twitter.com/TV4SqSaeoQ
— Wrigley Field (@ofcwrigleyfield) August 1, 2025
In addition to Manfred and Ricketts, Gov. JB Pritzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Kara Bachman, the executive director of the Chicago Sports Commission, gave speeches. Cubs president of business operations Crane Kenney emceed the event.
“I’m just really happy we finally got to this point,” Ricketts said after the festivities. “We spent, obviously, an incredible amount of time and energy and resources to get the ballpark in good shape. We felt like it was our turn, and we were ready for it. And just took a little bit of extra work from the city and the state to help us get the commissioner over the hump.”
It was the culmination of eight years of work, and, as Bauchman put it, several “strikeouts.” But they had a breakthrough in May when a Wrigley Field perimeter safety ordinance was introduced to the City Council.
“Security was really the only one that I would characterize as a breakthrough,” Manfred said. “Beyond that, it’s really just a question of, in a big city like Chicago, with a lot going on, if there’s other big events in the city, we may not have the hotel space or whatever [it may be] available that needed to be available to make it work.
“And you’ve got to remember, it’s a competitive process. There are a lot of people that want these games, and working through that competition also can take some time.”
The timing of the All-Star Game, in the year after the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires, raised further questions.
What happens if there’s a work stoppage? The last time Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association sat at a bargaining table, a lockout shortened 2022 spring training pushed back opening day by a week.
The relationship between the two parties has only seemed to grow more contentious in the years since.
“My ‘contingency plan’ is to make an agreement with the players and play the ‘27 season,” Manfred said. “ … I think it is natural that when you get to the end of a collective bargaining agreement, people who are glass-half-filled people have trepidation about what’s going to happen. I’m optimistic that we’ll find a way to make a deal.”
