The 2026 National League playoffs open with a thrilling rematch of last October’s opening round as the #4 San Diego Padres (90-71, 50-30 home) host the #5 Chicago Cubs (88-73, 42-38 away) at Petco Park.

All three games of this best-of-three series will be played in San Diego, where the Padres look to leverage their home-field advantage to reverse recent postseason history against Craig Counsell’s dangerous Cubs squad.

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Despite being slight underdogs in this best-of-three series, the Cubs enter the postseason with a +1640 average price in the World Series odds , which is narrowly ahead of the Padres at +2040.

This matchup brings together one of the most compelling revenge storylines in this year’s postseason bracket. In the 2025 NL Wild Card round, the Cubs edged out the Padres in a three-game battle at Wrigley Field, igniting Chicago’s memorable October run that carried them all the way to the NLCS.

While San Diego produced the superior overall regular season in 2026 with a 90–71 mark compared to Chicago’s 88–73 record, head-to-head encounters told an entirely different story. The Cubs completely dominated the season series by winning five of six against the Friars, including five in a row after San Diego won the first regular-season matchup.

The regular-season results included an absurd 23-3 Cubs win on July 1st, which is also the most-recent H2H meeting between the teams.

In a condensed three-game format, starting rotation deployment often dictates the entire series.