Baseball in Taiwan: Why the Rakuten Girls Made Taiwan’s CPBL the World’s Most Joyful Ballpark Experience

Ask a Taiwanese person what their national sport is and you will not hear ping pong. You will not hear basketball. You will hear棒球 — bàngqiú, baseball — and the answer will arrive with the same matter-of-fact pride that a Cuban gives you salsa or a Brazilian gives you soccer. Baseball in Taiwan is not a transplant or a curiosity. It is the rhythm of a humid August evening, the sound of plastic thundersticks hammering across a sold-out Taipei Dome, the reason a five-year-old in Kaohsiung knows the name of a left-handed reliever from Rakuten Monkeys before they can recite the multiplication tables.

For a country of 23 million people, Taiwan punches absurdly high in this sport. It has won the Little League World Series 17 times. It has stunned Japan and South Korea on the global stage. And in its own Chinese Professional Baseball League — the CPBL — it has built something the rest of the world has quietly figured out is more fun than the major leagues: an experience where the cheerleaders are stars, the food is incredible, and the seventh-inning stretch feels like a music festival. This is the complete guide to baseball in Taiwan — the history, the teams, the Rakuten Girls phenomenon, the stadium-night ritual, and exactly how to catch a game when you visit.

The Origins — How Baseball Became Taiwan’s Soul Sport

Baseball arrived in Taiwan the same way it arrived in Korea — strapped to the boot of a Japanese colonial administration. In 1906, the first formal Japanese-organized team played a game in Taipei, and within two decades the sport had spread to schools, sugar refineries, and the indigenous villages of the central mountains. The watershed moment came in 1931 when a multi-ethnic team from Chiayi — the now-legendary Kano squad, blending Japanese, Han Taiwanese, and indigenous players — rode all the way to the final of Japan’s prestigious Koshien high school tournament. That single run changed the cultural temperature of the island.

After 1945 the Japanese left, but baseball stayed. The Kuomintang government initially viewed the sport with suspicion — too Japanese, too colonial — but the people refused to give it up. The mythological turning point arrived in 1968 in a remote indigenous Bunun village called Hongye (Maple Leaf). A scrappy little league team of barefoot kids who practiced with bamboo bats and stones beat a visiting Japanese all-star squad. The country went insane. Baseball was no longer a colonial residue. It was Taiwan’s underdog story — the metaphor an island living in the shadow of giants had been waiting for.

By the 1970s and 80s Taiwan was dominating the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Generations of Taiwanese remember staying up past midnight to watch their teen players square off against American kids in a small town no one had heard of. The professional CPBL launched in 1990, MLB stars like Chien-Ming Wang brought New York-Yankees-level glory home in the 2000s, and somewhere along the way baseball stopped being a sport and started being a piece of Taiwanese identity itself.

CPBL Decoded — Inside Taiwan’s Six-Team Professional League

The Chinese Professional Baseball League — confusingly named, since Taiwan is not China — is the top pro league in the country and the older of the island’s two former pro leagues (the rival Taiwan Major League folded into the CPBL in 2003 after a brutal gambling scandal). Today the CPBL is in the middle of an expansion era, growing from four teams in the 2010s to six teams in 2024 and 2025. Every team has a distinct corporate parent, a wild fan culture, and a mascot that doubles as plush merch.

Here is the 2026 lineup, in roughly the order of recent dominance:

• Rakuten Monkeys (樂天桃猿) — based in Taoyuan, owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten. Multiple Taiwan Series champions, and the reason most foreigners discover CPBL fan culture in the first place (more on the Rakuten Girls in a moment).
• CTBC Brothers (中信兄弟) — the New York Yankees of Taiwan. Based in Taichung. Yellow-and-black colors, the largest and loudest fanbase, and a history that goes back to the original 1990 league. Brothers fans are religious.
• Uni-Lions (統一獅) — Tainan-based, owned by Uni-President (the convenience-store and instant-noodle conglomerate). The oldest still-active brand in the league. Orange jerseys. Southern Taiwan loyalty runs deep.
• Fubon Guardians (富邦悍將) — formerly the Xinzhuang Guardians, based in New Taipei City’s Xinzhuang Stadium. Owned by Fubon Financial. Knight mascot, aggressive defensive style.
• Wei Chuan Dragons (味全龍) — relaunched in 2019 after a long absence, won the Taiwan Series in 2023. Owned by the Wei Chuan food company. Dragon mascot, red and yellow uniforms.
• TSG Hawks (台鋼雄鷹) — the newest team, joined the league in 2024 as the sixth franchise. Based in Kaohsiung, owned by Taiwan Steel Group. Growing pains, but the South now has its own pro team again.

The season runs roughly March through October, with the Taiwan Series championship played in late October or early November. Games happen six nights a week. Tickets cost less than a movie. If you are in Taiwan during the season, there is almost no excuse not to go.

Meet the Rakuten Girls — Why CPBL Has the World’s Most Joyful Fan Culture

Here is the thing that breaks every visiting MLB fan’s brain. At a Taiwanese baseball game, the cheerleaders are stars. Not sideline decoration — actual celebrities with millions of Instagram followers, choreographed routines that change every game, and dedicated platforms built on top of each dugout so you can see them from anywhere in the stadium.

The most famous squad is the Rakuten Girls. Built around a rotating roster of 15-or-so performers, they perform a different cheer for every single batter on the home team. Yes — every batter has their own song. Yes — the entire crowd knows the words. Yes — the cheer is sometimes more memorable than the at-bat itself. Members like Yuri Lin, Crystal, and Lin Hsiang have crossed over into mainstream Taiwanese pop culture, signing endorsement deals, releasing music, and pulling crowds to the stadium that would never otherwise come for the baseball.

Every CPBL team has its own squad — the Passion Sisters for the Brothers, the Uni-Girls for the Lions, the Fubon Angels for the Guardians, the Dragon Beauties for Wei Chuan, the Wing Stars for the Hawks. The cheer leaders are organized into shifts, perform throughout the game, run dance breaks during pitching changes, and host meet-and-greets that sell out in seconds.

Critics outside Taiwan sometimes raise eyebrows. Inside Taiwan, the squads are widely regarded as professional performers with their own agency and creative input — many are dancers, K-pop trainees, or social media talents who chose this career path specifically because the CPBL stage is one of the most-watched in Taiwanese entertainment. The result is a stadium experience that feels less like a passive American baseball game and more like a music festival that happens to have a ball game in the middle. It is genuinely, unapologetically fun, and it is the single biggest reason CPBL has been bleeding international viewers off MLB and NPB streams in the last few years.

Inside the Ballpark — Stadium Food, Cheers & The Pulse of a CPBL Night

Walk into a CPBL stadium on a Friday night and the first thing that hits you is the smell — fried chicken cutlets, sausages on sticks, scallion pancakes, and the unmistakable sweet-iced aroma of bubble tea passing every row. Concession food in Taiwan is not the cardboard-pretzel-and-stale-popcorn dystopia of an American ballpark. It is closer to a moving night market that happens to be in fixed seats.

The classic CPBL stadium spread:

• Fried chicken cutlets (雞排) — the size of your face, dusted with white pepper, the unofficial currency of the upper deck
• Lu rou fan (滷肉飯) — braised pork belly over rice in a styrofoam box, comfort food champion
• Stadium bento boxes from local 7-Eleven or Family Mart — pork chop or chicken leg over rice, the practical fan’s choice
• Taiwan Beer and Taiwan Beer Gold — yes you can drink in the stadium, and yes it is part of the experience
• Bubble tea from in-stadium vendors — usually a 50 Lan or CoCo branch, sometimes both

Then there is the gear. CPBL fans dress up. Team jerseys, foam tomahawks, megaphones, glowstick tubes, and at least one inflatable mascot per section. Many fans bring their own thundersticks. Some bring choreographed signs. The dress code is maximum visible team loyalty, and if you show up in your favorite Taiwan baseball tee you will be welcomed like family.

Speaking of jerseys — if you want to show up looking like a real Taiwan baseball fan but cannot commit to a specific team’s gear, our Taiwan Baseball 2025 Commemorative Typography Tee is a clean way to fly the flag without picking a side. It is what we wear when we are visiting a team we do not normally root for and want to keep the peace in the section.

The atmosphere inside the stadium reaches its peak around the seventh inning. The cheer leaders dial up, the brass section gets louder, hundreds of inflatable thundersticks slam in unison, and the entire stadium — toddlers, grandparents, teenagers with phone-light flashlights — does the team chant. It is the moment that converts every visiting baseball fan. You leave the stadium thinking, “Wait — why is MLB not like this?”

How to Catch a Game — Tickets, Stadiums & The Match-Ups Worth Flying In For

The good news is that catching a CPBL game is wildly easy and wildly affordable. Tickets generally run from NT$250 to NT$800 (roughly US$8–25) depending on the stadium, the match-up, and whether it is a weekend or a holiday. Even the most expensive premium seats are cheaper than a bleacher ticket at Yankee Stadium.

Where to buy tickets

The official channels for 2026 are:

• CPBL official site (cpbl.com.tw) — English-friendly, accepts international cards, releases tickets about two weeks before each home stand
• ibon kiosks at every 7-Eleven in Taiwan — the most Taiwanese way to do it, but the kiosk is only in Chinese
• Klook and KKDay — third-party tourist platforms that mark up slightly but handle the language barrier and bundle add-ons like a Rakuten Girls meet-and-greet ticket

The five stadiums you should know

• Taipei Dome (台北大巨蛋) — Taiwan’s first major covered stadium, opened in late 2023. The flagship venue. Hosts Brothers and Fubon home games and most of the big-event games. MRT-accessible (Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall station).
• Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium (桃園國際棒球場) — home of the Rakuten Monkeys. Closer to the airport than Taipei, easy day trip if you fly in on the morning of a game.
• Tainan Municipal Baseball Stadium (臺南市立棒球場) — historic home of the Uni-Lions, deep southern Taiwan loyalty in the stands.
• Xinzhuang Stadium (新莊棒球場) — home of the Fubon Guardians, easy MRT access from Taipei (Touqianzhuang station).
• Kaohsiung Chengcing Lake Stadium — base of the TSG Hawks, the southern crown jewel for the league’s newest franchise. Pair a game with a Kaohsiung weekend trip.

The match-ups worth planning around

Three games to put on the calendar:

1. Brothers vs Rakuten Monkeys — the league’s biggest rivalry. Sold-out crowds, dueling cheer squads, the best fan-energy game on the calendar.
2. Uni-Lions vs TSG Hawks (the southern derby) — Tainan vs Kaohsiung, two distinctly southern Taiwanese fanbases, with bento box culture and Taiwan Beer Gold flowing.
3. Any Taipei Dome game on a Saturday night — the stadium pulses, the cheer leaders go full festival mode, and the Sun Yat-Sen MRT station feels like a parade afterward.

Beyond the Pros — Little League Champions, WBC Dreams & Taiwan’s Place in Global Baseball

The CPBL is the headline, but baseball in Taiwan is a pyramid. Underneath the pros sits one of the most over-performing youth baseball ecosystems on the planet.

Taiwan has won the Little League World Series 17 times, second only to the United States. Tainan’s Dong Yuan Elementary School and Kaohsiung’s Gongming Elementary are among the schools that have produced multiple championships. In 2024 and 2025, Taiwanese teams returned to Williamsport and continued their dominance — and Taiwanese broadcasters covered the games like they were the Super Bowl. There is a very specific kind of midnight in Taipei where you can walk past a 24-hour breakfast shop and see the entire staff and a row of taxi drivers watching twelve-year-olds in white jerseys on a single TV.

The next level is the World Baseball Classic. Taiwan has been an underdog at the WBC for decades, but the 2026 tournament was a watershed. The team posted competitive performances and Taiwan-only highlights have racked up millions of views — though the headline moment, the 13-0 mercy-rule loss to Japan, also became a national talking point. We covered that game and its complicated legacy in our breakdown of Taiwan’s WBC 2026 run.

Then there are the MLB exports. Chien-Ming Wang remains the most-watched Taiwanese export — a Yankees ace in the mid-2000s and a folk hero whose Yankees No. 40 jersey is still on sale in Ximending. Hong-Chih Kuo, Wei-Yin Chen, and a growing crop of younger players have followed. As of the 2026 season, scouts from MLB, NPB, and KBO regularly camp out at CPBL games looking for the next signing.

For a country that the IOC will not let compete under its real name, baseball is one of the few global stages where Taiwan plays as Chinese Taipei, holds its own, and occasionally wins. It matters more than the box scores suggest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is baseball really the most popular sport in Taiwan?

Yes. Baseball, basketball, and badminton all have strong followings, and the P.LEAGUE+ basketball league has grown fast in the 2020s, but every national poll on “favorite sport” still puts baseball in first. The CPBL Taiwan Series consistently draws the biggest broadcast numbers of any Taiwanese sporting event.

When does the CPBL season run?

The regular season runs from late March through October. The playoffs and the Taiwan Series (the league championship) are typically held in late October or early November. There is no CPBL baseball from December through February.

Can I attend a CPBL game without speaking Chinese?

Absolutely. Stadium signs at Taipei Dome and most major venues have English. The CPBL official ticketing site has an English flow. Klook and KKDay package tours include English-speaking guides. And the experience itself — the cheer leaders, the food, the chants — translates without language.

Who are the Rakuten Girls?

The Rakuten Girls are the official cheer squad of the Rakuten Monkeys, Taiwan’s most-watched CPBL team. They have become bona fide celebrities, with each performer maintaining her own brand, social media following, and sometimes a music career. They perform choreographed routines during every game from elevated dugout-top stages.

How much does a CPBL game ticket cost?

Tickets range from about NT$250 for upper-deck seats to NT$800 for premium dugout-level seating at the Taipei Dome. Special games and the Taiwan Series can run higher. Compared to MLB or NPB, CPBL is one of the cheapest pro baseball experiences in the world.

Are CPBL games family-friendly?

Yes — and the family demographic is one of the most visible groups in the stadium. Kids in mini-jerseys eating shaved ice, grandparents with cushion seats, and teenagers organizing chants. Beer is sold but the atmosphere is closer to a music festival than a rowdy sports bar.

What is the difference between the CPBL and the old Taiwan Major League?

The Taiwan Major League (TML) ran from 1997 to 2003 as a competing pro league. After a gambling scandal damaged Taiwanese baseball’s reputation, the two leagues merged under the CPBL umbrella, with a few TML teams reorganizing as new CPBL franchises. Today there is only one top professional league: the CPBL.

Can foreign players join the CPBL?

Yes. Each CPBL team is permitted a small roster of foreign players, mostly Americans, Cubans, and Dominicans. Many are MLB-experienced pitchers and sluggers who use the CPBL as a comeback league or a final stop. Foreign player signings are a big offseason story every winter.

Final Thoughts

Baseball in Taiwan is a 120-year story that started with a Japanese colonial obsession, survived a regime change, escaped a gambling scandal, and somewhere along the way figured out something the rest of the baseball world is just catching on to: that the game is better when it is also a party. The CPBL is loud, the cheer squads are stars, the food is unreasonably good, and the tickets cost less than a movie. If you are coming to Taiwan during the season — late March through October — putting one Friday night at a CPBL stadium on your itinerary will give you more cultural insight in three hours than any temple tour.

And if you are not flying in soon? Pick a team. Stream a game. The CPBL is on YouTube, Twitch, and Eleven Sports. The Rakuten Girls’ routines are choreographed to global pop hits. The crowd chants are addictive. Half the joy of Taiwanese baseball is that anyone, anywhere, can become a fan with one ten-minute YouTube highlight reel and a 24.99-dollar tee. For Taipei-bound travelers ready to dive deeper into the city’s nightlife rhythm, pair your stadium night with our complete Things to Do in Taipei guide, and you will have a Friday-night plan that no Lonely Planet itinerary will ever beat.