The 2026 MLB Home Run Derby will be held on July 13 at Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia, home of the 2026 MLB All-Star Game. While we don’t know exactly which players are participating yet, commitments are slowly coming in as that date approaches.
Here is every player who has officially committed to the 2026 MLB Home Run Derby.
Kansas City Royals slugger Jac Caglianone is the latest to commit to participating in the Home Run Derby on Monday in Philadelphia.
Five Kansas City players have previously participated in the event: Bo Jackson (1989), Danny Tartabull (1991), Mike Moustakas (2017), Salvador Perez (2021) and Bobby Witt Jr. (2024). None have come away with the title. This is the first Derby for the 23-year-old Caglianone.
Witt was the runner-up in 2024 when he hit 50 home runs in total. He hit 13 HRs in the final round, one shy of Teoscar Hernandez’s 14.
In his first full season with the Royals, Caglianone is hitting .258/.322/.455 (77-for-299) with a team-high 14 home runs and 33 RBIs in 85 games. His 14 home runs have averaged 418 feet in length, which is tied for the best average in the majors this season. Caglianone has also gotten hot of late, with nine of those 14 homers coming in June.
New York Yankees slugger Ben Rice will be swinging for the fences in Philadelphia on July 13. Rice, who leads the Yankees with 26 homers this season after going deep in a 6-4 loss to Tampa Bay on Tuesday, said that he will be participating in the Home Run Derby.
“I was really honored. I was hoping they’d ask,’ said Rice, who’ll aim to become the first Yankees player to win the derby since Aaron Judge in 2017. ‘It doesn’t feel real until they actually reach out, but it was cool when they did.”
The 27-year-old Rice said on social media that his father, Dan, who pitched in college at Brown in the 1980s, will throw to him. Rice said they’ve already been practicing for the contest.
‘I had to think through it and make sure it was the right decision to participate and see if my dad could do it,” Rice said, noting that his father has thrown to him from the time he learned to play to the present.
Rice has 59 homers over his first three seasons in the majors.
This is the second straight a year a Yankees player will appear in the Home Run Derby. Jazz Chisholm Jr. entered last year but was eliminated in the first round.
Judge is one of four Yankees players to win the Home Run Derby. The others are Tino Martinez (1997), Jason Giambi (2002) and Robinson Canó (2011).
Just hours after committing to participating in the event in Philadelphia on July 13, Junior Caminero homered in his fifth straight game, a three-run shot off the Royals’ Noah Cameron. It was his eighth in the past seven games — something nobody in club history has ever accomplished — and it sent Tampa Bay to a 10-4 rout of Kansas City in the opener of their three-game series.
Asked to put Caminero’s hot streak in perspective, Rays manager Kevin Cash replied: “I don’t know if I can. He’s really seeing the ball well,” Cash said, “and when he gets a ball to hit, he’s doing it.”
Caminero, the AL player of the week after launching seven homers and piling up 15 RBIs, put on a show last year in the Home Run Derby. With his multicolored bat sending social media ablaze, Caminero advanced to the final round before losing a close contest to Seattle slugger Cal Raleigh. The final was 18-15 in a long-ball hitting showcase that boosted ratings on ESPN.
Caminero, who turned 23 on July 5, went on to hit 45 homers last season, finishing sixth in Major League Baseball. Through July 7, Caminero has 26, with 11 in his last 14 games.
“I mean, thank God he’s on our team,” Rays pitcher Griffin Jax said with a smile. “The way he’s doing it with the power and the not chasing and the not whiffing is just so impressive.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
