Home Run Derby Winners By Year

 Every July, the game stops pretending baseball is about pitching for one night. Eight of the biggest power hitters in the sport step into the cage and just swing. No defense, no strategy, no stolen bases. Pure distance and volume, counted out loud while a crowd loses its mind in a stadium that was built for moments exactly like this.

The Home Run Derby has been part of All-Star Week since 1985, and it has produced some of the most memorable individual performances in baseball’s recent history. A 20-year-old kid hitting 91 home runs in a single night at Coors Field. A hometown hero stealing the title with nine homers in his last 50 seconds. A catcher, of all positions, becoming champion for the first time in the event’s four-decade history. A man who has won it more than anyone else, collecting titles across three different decades.

The format has changed several times. The venues have ranged from Minneapolis to Miami to Los Angeles. The stars who have stood in that batter’s box read like a who’s who of the most feared hitters of their generation. And the 2026 edition is coming up on July 13 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, giving the host city a chance to cheer one of their own on home turf.

The complete list of every winner since 1985 is below, along with the records, the multi-time champions, the format history, and the performances that still get talked about decades later.

Why some eras produced dynasties

The early Derby was a looser, more informal affair. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the format changed almost annually and the event didn’t carry the same cultural weight it does now. When ESPN began broadcasting it in 1994 and Ken Griffey Jr. won the first televised edition, the thing transformed overnight. Griffey came back and won it again in 1998 and 1999, and suddenly the Derby had a face and a storyline.

The steroid era produced enormous numbers but also some of the event’s more complicated moments. The 2000s brought a rotating cast of big names without anyone truly owning the event until Pete Alonso arrived and won back to back in 2019 and 2021. The introduction of the timed format in 2015 changed everything about how the competition works, replacing the old outs-based system with a clock that rewards volume hitters who can sustain a pace over a full minute rather than just saving their best for three outs.

The bottom line

No other event in baseball gives a single player an unobstructed stage quite like the Derby does. No pitcher to beat, no fielders to rob you, no manager to pull you in the seventh. Just the ball, the bat, and the distance. That simplicity is exactly why it has lasted 40 years and why the names on the list below carry weight well beyond a Tuesday night exhibition in July.

Philadelphia gets its turn on July 13. The next name on the list is still TBD.

— Legion Report