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(June 2026) -- We have added historical coverage of the Asia-Pacific Region tournament to the Unpage site! Click on the left side of this page to explore past tournament winners and results. As part of this coverage, we have begun our coverage of the 2026 Asia-Pacific Region tournament -- click for details. ----- 2026 brings our 30th and final summer of coverage for the international tournament, and our coverage this year will begin with post-district tournament competition.
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Our coverage of the Asia-Pacific Region tournament launched on June 10, 2026. Click to contact the webmaster with any comments or questions about this site.
Little League Baseball's initial development in the Asia-Pacific Region was closely linked to the U.S. military's presence throughout the Pacific Rim, and particularly in Japan. What had once been an occupying force in the aftermath of World War II had evolved into a logistics hub and medical base during the Korean War. After a reduction in force following that conflict's end, by 1960 the U.S. had roughly 50,000 active duty personnel stationed on the Japanese mainland, and another 125,000 personnel stationed throughout the region.
That military presence sparked the first development of Little League Baseball in the region. The initial leagues, formed near Tokyo in 1954, served dependents of active duty personnel and expatriot businessmen, native Japanese players, or both. The U.S. military in Japan sponsored the initial tournaments in this area, though these were held outside the structure of Little League's international tournament competition. Leagues affiliated with other bases in the Pacific Rim were invited but were often unable to compete against Japan-based leagues due to travel difficulties.
At the same time, Little League Baseball was growing rapidly in Hawaii, with leagues chartered on several islands, and with a particularly strong presence in areas near Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Oahu. Father Ray Hanrahan, assistant pastor at St. John's church in Honolulu, had sparked early organizing efforts in 1950, and leagues began to spread throughout Hawaii. In 1958, one year before Hawaii became a state, the Little League World Series expanded to eight regions, and the Hawaii champion earned a berth in the Little League World Series. Pearl Harbor Little League became the first Pacific Region champion after defeating Barbers Point Little League, 1-0, to win the Hawaiian title in 1958.
Hawaii's champion continued to advance to the Little League World Series as the Pacific Region champion through 1960, but in 1961, an important shift occurred. Little League organizers in Japan, most of whom were members of the U.S. military stationed in Japan, organized a Far East championship tournament that brought Japan-based leagues into the international tournament for the first time. The organizers held an extensive fundraising drive in the months leading up to the Pacific Region tournament that raised ¥4,000,000 ($13,000, or roughly $145,000 in 2026 dollars) to fund transporting the winning team to Hawaii for the region championship. Misawa Air Base Little League won the Far East title, and the team, which was comprised of children of American military personnel, then faced Hilo American Little League (Hawaii) in a game played at Fort DeRussy Field on Oahu. The next year, Hawaii was reassigned to the Western Region, and the Asia-Pacific Region -- then called the Pacific Region, and later the Far East Region -- began to encompass only leagues in the Pacific Rim. The next year, Kunitachi City Little League from Tokyo became the first Japan-based league, and the first team comprised of native Japanese players, to compete in the Little League World Series after defeating a team from Okinawa in the Pacific Region championship game.
In ensuing years, the Japan Little League Baseball Association was formed, and tournament competition in the region evolved from one that included U.S. as well as native Japanese players to one that focused on teams comprised of local players. U.S. Armed Forces Japan held a separate tournament outside of the international tournament structure for teams affiliated with military bases.
The latter part of the 1960s saw several important developments. First, Japanese teams became significantly more competitive at the Little League World Series, with West Tokyo Little League (1967) and Wakayama Little League (1968) winning the Little League World Series. Second, the region tournament began to take on a multicultural flavor, as Guam sent its district champion to Tokyo in 1968 to face the Japanese champion in the first multinational version of the Pacific Region tournament.
The third key development was the affiliation of Taiwan with Little League Baseball. In 1968, a team from Japan's Kansai region embarked upon a friendship tour of Taiwan, and was defeated, 7-0, by a team from Hongye Elementary School in remote Taitung County. The result transcended a simple youth baseball exhibition contest due to nuances related to several cultural overlays: the former Japanese colony had defeated the colonizer; the victors were impoverished native Taiwanese from a remote area rather than descendents of mainlanders who fled to Taiwan in the waning days of the Chinese revolution; and Japan's team, though a different team entirely, was said to be the Wakayama Little League team that had just won the Little League World Series. The game, which was broadcast live on the island's only television channel, immediately vaulted Hongye -- Red Leaf in Mandarin -- and the sport of baseball in general to a prominent place in the public eye. This was noteworthy because the ruling Kuomintang party previously had little use for a sport more closely associated with Taiwan's former Japanese colonizers, and had long signaled this lack of importance through an absence of funding for local competition.
The mythology around Taiwan's victory was, and, to some extent today, remains wildly inaccurate. Hongye had been among Taiwan's most successful elementary school teams since founding its program in 1963 as a means of combating truancy, and had won two recent Taiwanese elementary school championships; its coach was soon convicted in Taitung district court of forging documents and was rumored to have replaced several team members with overage players; and the Japanese team could not have been the 1968 Little League World Series championship team as that event had not yet concluded.
The narrative around The Miracle of Red Leaf, though, was politically useful for an island state that was governed under martial law and increasingly isolated on the world stage. Within days, the Taiwanese Defense Minister personally congratulated the team and pledged to visit their village, and the Ministry of Education announced a large donation to the school for sports equipment. Taiwan's government was eager to capitalize on the team's success, and to use it as a vehicle to reenforce the ruling government's emphasis, in a period before Taiwan's economy had begun to improve, on the potential rewards for hard work.
The next year, Taiwan chartered its first Little League programs. Taiwanese teams dominated region competition over the next several years: the 1969 team was an island-wide all-star team, other teams through 1973 drew players from broad regions that encompassed multiple counties, and both the recruitment of promising players from all points of the island and the use of overage players were standard practice. (The star pitcher on Taiwan's 1971 Little League World Series championship team had also played in South Williamsport in 1970 as a member of that year's Far East Region championship team, which purported to represent a league from a different part of the island.) Taiwan's Little League success was generally viewed locally as a marker of achievement on the world stage, and a point of pride for an island and a government needing success stories in the face of declining international standing.
Little League Baseball eventually prohibited international teams from competing in the Little League World Series in 1975 before rescinding the ban and placing U.S. and international teams into separate brackets when these teams returned in 1976. Taiwan -- later referred to as Chinese Taipei following the resolution of a long-standing dispute with China over Taiwan's identifying itself as the Republic of China -- eventually abandoned its relationship with Little League Baseball in 1997 when Williamsport signaled it planned to more stringently enforce its rules. (Schools from which Chinese Taipei teams were formed were often several times larger than what Little League rules permitted.) Chinese Taipei returned in 2003 with its tournaments restricted to teams that could meet Little League's school population requirements.
In 2001, the Little League World Series expanded from eight to sixteen teams, and the Far East Region, renamed as the Asia-Pacific Region and remaining intact as an administrative region, was split into Asia and Pacific Regions for tournament competition. This arrangement remained in place until 2007, when the regions were recombined, and Japan's champion was granted direct access to the Little League World Series. The Australian Baseball Federation partnered with Little League in 2008, quickly became one of Little League's highest-participation countries, and also received direct Little League World Series access in 2013. That same year, the Asia-Pacific Region's footprint expanded to encompass most Middle Eastern countries.
The Asia-Pacific Region tournament is typically held in South Korea in late June or early July. National champions from throughout the region compete for the region's championship and a berth in the Little League World Series.
Click to view a timeline showing the evolution of the Asia-Pacific Region Little League tournament structure.
 Great Lakes Region |
Mountain Region |
Southeast Region |
| Metro Region |
New England Region |
Southwest Region |
| Mid-Atlantic Region |
Northwest Region |
West Region |
| Midwest Region |
| Asia-Pacific Region NEW FOR 2026! |
Cuba |
France |
| Australia Region |
Czechia |
Japanese Region |
| Canadian Region |
Europe-Africa Region NEW FOR 2026! |
Latin America Region NEW FOR 2026! |
| Caribbean Region NEW FOR 2026! |
| Alabama |
Iowa |
North Carolina |
| Alaska |
Kansas |
Ohio NEW FOR 2026! |
| Arizona |
Kentucky NEW FOR 2026! |
Ontario |
| British Columbia |
Maine |
Oregon |
| California (Northern) |
Maryland |
Pennsylvania |
| California (Southern) |
Massachusetts |
Rhode Island |
| Colorado |
Michigan |
South Dakota |
| Connecticut |
Minnesota |
Tennessee |
| Delaware |
Missouri |
Texas (East and West) |
| District of Columbia |
Montana |
Utah NEW FOR 2026! |
| Florida |
Nebraska |
Vermont |
| Georgia |
Nevada |
Virginia |
| Hawaii |
New Hampshire |
Washington |
| Idaho |
New Jersey |
Wisconsin |
| Illinois |
New Mexico |
Wyoming |
| Indiana |
New York |
| Central Region |
Southern Region |
Western Region |
| Eastern Region |
| Region 1 |
Region 4 |
Region 7 |
| Region 2 |
Region 5 |
Region 8 |
| Region 3 |
Region 6 |