Japan defeated Ohio 3-2 in the third-place game at the Little League World Series on Sunday morning, Aug. 30, 2026, closing out every game at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania except the championship. Willemstad, Curacao then beat Henderson, Nevada, 11-2, in Sunday afternoon’s championship game at the same stadium, winning its second Little League World Series title and first since 2004, before an estimated crowd of 24,844.
Key facts
- Japan beat Ohio 3-2 in Sunday morning’s third-place game at Howard J. Lamade Stadium
- Champion: Curacao (Willemstad) beat Nevada (Henderson) 11-2 in the championship game, its second LLWS title (first since 2004)
- Nevada beat Ohio 12-2 in Saturday’s U.S. championship game, which ended after five innings under the mercy rule
- Curacao beat Japan 4-0 in Saturday’s international championship game; pitcher Jaymiell Martina struck out 12 batters
- The tournament opened Aug. 19 with 20 teams, 10 from the U.S. and 10 from abroad
- Nevada is the reigning U.S. champion but lost the 2025 world final to Chinese Taipei
How Nevada and Curacao got here
Both finalists arrived by winning their respective championship games on Saturday, Aug. 29. Nevada beat Ohio 12-2; the game ended after five innings under Little League’s mercy rule, giving Henderson its second straight U.S. title. Curacao’s path looked different: Willemstad beat Tokyo, Japan, 4-0, to win the international championship, with pitcher Jaymiell Martina striking out 12 of the batters he faced over 5.2 innings.
Those results set up Sunday’s bracket: the two teams that lost Saturday, Ohio and Japan, played each other Sunday morning for third place, while Nevada and Curacao moved on to face each other for the title.
A Nevada player’s RBI hit
One storyline out of Nevada’s U.S. championship win came from 12-year-old Carsynn Meyer, an outfielder and catcher for the Henderson team, who drove in a run with an RBI single in the 12-2 win over Ohio — a hit that made her the 13th girl in LLWS history to record one. Little League’s own coverage lists her as one of two girls playing on U.S. teams in this year’s tournament, alongside Kinley Rasmus of Alabama, and identifies her separately as the 26th girl to play in the Little League World Series since it began in 1947.
The championship game
The championship game between Nevada and Curacao started at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday at Howard J. Lamade Stadium and aired on ABC. The third-place game between Japan and Ohio was played earlier that morning and shown on ESPN. Curacao won the title 11-2, with Juriensly De Windt (who started on the mound and added a bases-clearing double) and Shardijon De Lanoi each driving in three runs, for its second LLWS championship and first since 2004.
The bigger picture
This year’s tournament opened Aug. 19 with 20 teams, 10 from the U.S. and 10 from abroad, in a modified double-elimination bracket that Sunday’s championship closed out. For Nevada, the loss extended a pattern: the team won the U.S. title in back-to-back years but fell short of the world championship both times, losing the 2025 world final to Chinese Taipei and now the 2026 final to Curacao.