Human umpires will remain behind the plate calling balls and strikes in Major League Baseball games, but in 2026 their calls will be officially open to challenge via technology for the first time.
The league’s Joint Competition Committee voted Tuesday to bring the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System to the big leagues next season, following several years of experimentation in the Minor Leagues and use in MLB Spring Training and the All-Star Game this year.
According to MLB.com, Hawk-Eye technology will continue to run in the background and monitor the exact location of each pitch, relative to the batter’s zone. Only players — the batter, the catcher, or the pitcher — can request a challenge of a ball or strike call they feel the umpire got wrong.
When a call is challenged, the Hawk-Eye view is transmitted over a 5G private network from T-Mobile’s Advanced Network Solutions and shown via videoboard to those in the ballpark and to home viewers via the broadcast. The ball-strike call is then either confirmed or overturned, and the game goes on.
Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless carrier T-Mobile called it an “exciting milestone” in its longstanding partnership with MLB, adding that while it was helping the league innovate, it was also “preserving the character of the game we love.”
Some video review of calls on the field has been a part of baseball since 2008. The ABS system introduces technology that serves as a middle ground, preserving the human error that comes with real umpires and stopping short of giving all ball-strike calls to “robot umps.”
When Seattle hosted the All-Star Game at T-Mobile Park in 2023, we caught up with baseball fans to ask whether they were ready for “robot” umpires. Baseball traditionalists and champions of change offered opinions about how technology could alter the sport for better or worse. Most agreed that a human being needs to remain behind home plate even if that ump has to cede some control to a robot with a better eye for balls and strikes.
MLB.com has a lengthy FAQ on the rules around the ABS Challenge System, including how many challenges a team gets, how it all works and more.
