The National Hockey League (NHL) has announced that the World Cup of Hockey will return in 2028, with prospective host cities invited to submit bids.
The event will be held in February 2028 and will mark the fourth staging of the tournament. The most recent edition took place in 2016, when all games were held at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Canada.
Previous editions were held in 2004 and 1996 across multiple countries. The 2028 event will be jointly organised by the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association and will continue a regular schedule of international competitions involving NHL players.
The 4 Nations Face-Off, contested by Canada, USA, Finland and Sweden, commenced yesterday (Wednesday), with games taking place at Bell Centre in Montreal and TD Garden in Boston. NHL players will take part in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, and at the 2030 Games.
A bidding process for host cities and venues for the World Cup of Hockey is expected to open in the coming months. The tournament will be played on NHL-sized rinks using NHL rules, with other competition details to be determined in the coming months.
Further details, including participating teams, tournament dates and time, training camp dates and locations, will be announced later in the year.
Speaking ahead of the start of the 4 Nations Face-Off, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said: “We will be asking for bids on hosting games.
“We will have a package that’s just about done that will be done in the next few weeks and we couldn’t be more excited about making a reality Olympics-World Cups-Olympics-World Cups on a regular schedule of the best hockey players in the world representing their countries and we know the full-blown World Cup, of which this (the 4 Nations Face-Off) is simply a sampler, is going to be sensational.”
