The Pan American Baseball Confederation (COPABE) was formed in 1984, during the
International Baseball Federation (IBAF) congress in Cuba during the
1984 Amateur World Series. The first tournament, known as the
Copa Simón Bolívar, was organized in 1985. The 2000 tournament served as a qualifier for the
2001 Baseball World Cup in Taiwan. COPABE first rebranded the tournament as the Copa América in 2007, based on a proposal by the Venezuelan Baseball Federation, with the hope that turning it into a more formal event would encourage the participation of
Major League Baseball players. The
2008 Copa América was held in Venezuela, with
Puerto Rico taking the championship. However, despite talks of making the tournament a recurring event, it was not continued. Despite the abandonment of the "Copa América" idea, the IBAF scheduled a Panamerican qualifier tournaments in 2010, which acted as a qualifier for the
2011 Pan American Games and the
2011 Baseball World Cup. Another qualifier event for the
Baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics was scheduled for the six American teams that did not qualify directly for the Olympics at the
2019 WBSC Premier12, as well as the top two finishers at the Pan American Games that did not participate in the Premier12. The event, initially scheduled to be held in March 2020 in Arizona, was postponed to May 2021 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Cancelled 2025 tournament In November 2024,
ESPN reported that the WBSC had approved a plan to revive the Copa América tournament, scheduled to be played from the 13th to the 22nd of November 2025 with the 12 best-ranked national teams in the Americas by
WBSC World Rankings. In May 2025, the WBSC confirmed the 12 teams would be the
Dominican Republic,
Venezuela,
Panama,
Colombia,
Curaçao,
Brazil in Group A,
Mexico, Puerto Rico,
Cuba, the
USA,
Nicaragua and
Canada in Group B. The hosts were initially announced as Panama and Mexico, though Mexico later dropped out and was replaced by Venezuela; Venezuela was ultimately dropped as host due to
geopolitical tensions, after the Dominican Republic considered withdrawing from the tournament. In November 2025, just days before it was scheduled to commence, the tournament was cancelled. WBSC Americas blamed the cancellation on breach of contract by the tournament promoter in Panama, and said the games would be rescheduled. ==Results==