Major League Baseball, which has yet to begin the second half of the 2026 season, on Tuesday released the schedule for next year, which has the Rangers opening the season at Houston and opening at home a week later against the Athletics, the team who remain without a hometown attached.
Providing talks on a Collective Bargaining Agreement, which is set to expire on Dec. 1, don’t lead an owner-imposed lockout that cuts into spring training and the regularly scheduled season, the Rangers will open on March 25 at Houston. It would be the earliest date the Rangers have ever begun a regular season, eclipsing 2026 by a single day.
The Rangers are scheduled to play Thursday-Saturday at Houston, oddly take off Easter Sunday and then resume their season-opening road trip with three games at fellow division rival Seattle.
The home opener would be April 1 against the Athletics to start a four-day series. The Rangers would finish off the initial homestand with three games against Tampa Bay.
The schedule is also rife with early interleague away dates at potential cold-weather destinations. The Rangers play at the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati, New York Mets and Washington all before the end of April. The potential complications from weather could force the Rangers to come back on an off day for a single game if any game gets postponed.
The Rangers will host NL opponents St. Louis, Philadelphia, Colorado, Atlanta, Arizona, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami and Milwaukee at Globe Life Field.
One other odd twist is the Ranger will finish the schedule with nine straight interleague games – three at San Diego followed by a weeklong homestand against Miami and Milwaukee.
It will be the first time the Rangers finish the regular season at home since 2022 when they played four games against the New York Yankees. Ironically enough, they were not supposed to close the season against the Yankees, but an owner-imposed lockout forced the start of the season to be moved back and the Yankees series, originally scheduled for April, was moved to the end of the season. It allowed Aaron Judge to hit his AL single-season, record-breaking 62nd homer in Arlington.
So that’s the schedule. At least for now.