The 2026 World Series came with a guarantee that one team would graduate from the unfortunate list of MLB teams that have never won a title. That team turned out to be the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Brewers finished off the Tampa Bay Rays in five games on Wednesday, winning Game 5 by a score of 4-1. After 57 years of existence as a franchise, the club has its first Commissioner's Trophy.

The Brewers are the fourth franchise in the past decade to win a title for the first time, joining the Houston Astros (2017, 2022), Washington Nationals (2019) and Texas Rangers (2023). The Chicago Cubs arguably got an even bigger monkey off their back when they ended a 108-year title drought in 2016.

That leaves four MLB teams still waiting for their moment in the sun. Let's run through them.

Tampa Bay Rays (appeared in 2008, 2020, 2026 World Series)

The list, of course, starts with the Rays, who now have the lamentable status of being the team that has appeared in the most Fall Classics without winning. In fact, they've now reached as many World Series as the other three teams combined.

Tampa Bay spent its first decade of existence as one of the most hapless teams in all of sports, finishing last in nine of 10 seasons in the usually powerhouse AL East. That all changed in 2008, when an analytics-focused overhaul led by current Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman finally bore fruit with a World Series run that ended in a five-game loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Rays have been regularly competitive since then but it was Friedman and the Dodgers waiting for them in their next World Series appearance in the COVID-altered 2020 season. That ended in a six-game loss. This time around, they lost in five games.

San Diego Padres (1984, 1998)

The Rays have the most World Series appearances without a title, but it's the Padres who have now existed the longest without breaking through. The Padres and Milwaukee Brewers both came into existence as expansion teams in 1969, with the Brewers playing one season as the Seattle Pilots before moving to Wisconsin.

The Padres made their first World Series in 1984, led by a young Tony Gwynn in his first full MLB season. That team lost in five games to a dominant Detroit Tigers team. San Diego reached the final round again with Gwynn in 1998, but that series was even more one-sided, as the New York Yankees dynasty recorded a sweep.

The Padres have been competitive in the regular season since 2020 and have paid big money to keep name-brand talent in San Diego, but so far that has resulted in only a single NLCS appearance in 2022. This year's team beat the Chicago Cubs in the wild-card round but lost 3-1 to the Brewers in the NLDS.

Colorado Rockies (2007)

The Rockies have the third-worst winning percentage in MLB since their first season in 1993, and they haven't helped themselves on that front recently. Colorado just extended its streak of last-place NL West finishes to five seasons, after another streak of three fourth-place finishes. The Rockies have never won a division title.

They have reached the playoffs five times in 34 years, most recently in 2018, when they got swept out of the NLDS by the Brewers. Their lone World Series appearance came in 2007, with a team featuring Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holliday and Todd Helton.

That 2007 team entered the Fall Classic on a 10-game winning streak between the regular seasons and playoffs, having swept the Phillies and Diamondbacks, then got swept by the Boston Red Sox. The franchise has recorded two playoff victories since then.

Seattle Mariners (never appeared in World Series)

The Mariners are one of four teams to never win the World Series. They are the only team that has never reached the World Series.

They have certainly had the talent to do so in the past, reaching their first postseason in 1995 with an all-time great core of Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez in his rookie season. Among that group, only Martinez was there by 2001, but that's when Ichiro Suzuki arrived and led the team to a record-tying 116-win season, which ended in disappointment with a five-game ALCS loss to the Yankees.

Seattle has made the postseason only twice since then, in 2022 and 2025. Last year's team came closer to the Fall Classic than any other, taking the Toronto Blue Jays to seven games in the ALCS before George Springer broke their hearts via homer. This year's team was one of the most disappointing in MLB, missing the playoffs with a 76-86 record.

Which will be the next team to win its first World Series?

There's no way to know for sure. We could go by success this year, which would work out to something like …

1. Rays (98-64, reached World Series)

2. Padres (91-71, reached NLDS)

3. Mariners (76-86, missed playoffs by 8 games)

4. Rockies (58-105, missed playoffs by 30 games)

If you want to go by future talent, here's how the four teams placed in MLB Pipeline's post-trade-deadline farm system rankings.

1. Rays (No. 2)

2. Mariners (No. 9)

3. Rockies (No. 16)

4. Padres (No. 30)

There are many other ways to evaluate these organizations, but the unfortunate truth is that winning a World Series requires so many things to go right that it might as well be a lightning bolt. The Rays are probably the best equipped to break through, but they're also riding the wave of a small-market team maintaining a cheap roster year after year. Maybe that changes with the new CBA, but 2026 can't feel like anything but another missed opportunity.

Which team has the longest World Series drought?

Those four teams are all title-less, but they aren't the club that has waited the longest for a World Series title. The Cleveland Guardians last won it all in 1948, which represents the longest drought in MLB. It is also the second-longest drought in the four major American men's sports leagues, behind an Arizona Cardinals team that won the NFL championship in 1947, in the pre-merger days when it was playing in Chicago.

Cleveland has lost four World Series since then in 1954, 1995, 1997 and 2016. That 2016 loss probably stings the most after a 3-1 series lead led to a Game 7 that went to extra innings at home against a Cubs team looking to end an even longer drought.

This year's Guardians were tied 2-2 with the Rays in the ALCS but lost the next two games on strong starts by Drew Rasmussen and Freddy Peralta.