The 2026 MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia gets underway Tuesday night, and the city is already treating it like a major occasion. Gates opened at 5 p.m. at Citizens Bank Park, where fans started lining up early for the first All-Star Game in Philadelphia in 30 years.
Six Phillies will be on the field for the National League: Brandon Marsh, Jhoan Duran, Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. Schwarber is leading off for the National League and stepping in as the designated hitter, replacing Shohei Ohtani, who is skipping the showcase for a knee procedure ahead of the second half of the season.
For Phillies fans, the draw is as much about the setting as the matchup. The club is hosting the All-Star Game for the fourth time, but this is the first time it has landed at Citizens Bank Park, and the wait has been long enough that the night already feels bigger than a single exhibition.
That is part of why people were still showing up well before first pitch. Mike Shipula said he got there at 1:30, and Dalton Foster paid $650 to be in the building, calling Harper exactly what a Philadelphia crowd wants to hear: a player who fits the city’s edge.
Nicole Sheffer and Wes Sheffer gave the night a different kind of meaning. Sheffer said the game is their honeymoon and that it is how they are kicking things off, which fits the couple’s history: they first met at Citizens Bank Park, Wes Sheffer proposed there on the day of the Eagles' Super Bowl parade, and they were married on July 3.
Last year’s game ended tied 6-6 after nine innings before the National League won in a first-ever Home Run Derby-style swing-off, and it will try again for a second straight win over the American League. What time is the All-Star Game itself? That is the one detail fans were still asking as the night approached, even after the gates opened and the ballpark filled up.
