It's that time of year again! The 2026 IIHF U18 Women's World Championship is set to run from January 10-18, 2025 in Membertou and Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in Canada.
I (Nicole) will be on the ground covering the tournament with daily posts, mixed zone video content for our paid subscribers and live posting via Twitter/X*.
If you aren't already a subscriber, now would be a really good time to change that.
You can also support the site and Nicole's trip by making a donation via PayPal.
How to follow along
Cape Breton is on Atlantic Time, meaning it's an hour ahead of Eastern, two hours ahead of Central and so on.
The IIHF does not allow posting game video from on site, but I'll post pictures from the arena as well as all kinds of pics and videos from my time away from the arena in on my Instagram and will try to share a lot of it to Victory Press' Instagram, as well.
Nicole's Twitter/X
Nicole's BlueSky
VictoryPress' BlueSky
Nicole's Instagram
Victory Press' Instagram
*I would like to move away from posting on Twitter/X but the sports world is hanging on to the platform with a death grip. The IIHF and country federations all still post pretty much exclusively on Twitter/X. Non-rights holders are not allowed to post video, meaning all goals and highlights will most likely be on Twitter/X, which means I will be, too.
It can be helpful to keep the tournament roster and college commitments page open as you watch. I'll be updating those rosters with any additional information I learn when I'm on site.
Tournament Format
The groups are no longer weighted. Instead, the teams are distributed among the two groups according to their finishes at the 2025 tournament in a snake format. Group A is the teams that finished 1, 4, 5 and the team that was promoted. Group B is the teams that finished 2, 3, 6 and 7. As a reminder, Canada won gold, USA won silver and Czechia won bronze.
Teams will play a round robin within their group. Quarterfinal matchups are determined by how teams finish within that group. That classification is determined by:
- points
- head-to-head points
- head-to-head goal difference
- head-to-head number of goals scored
- result against closest best-ranked team outside tied teams
- result against second-best-ranked team outside tied teams
- seeding before tournament.
All eight teams from the Preliminary Round will play a cross-over Quarter-Final game: 1A vs. 4B, 1B vs. 4A, 2A vs. 3B and 2B vs. 3A.
Group A is Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and Hungary
Group B is United States, Czechia, Finland and Slovakia
More detailed tournament format information can be found here. (This links to last year's tournament information page as this year's tournament page does not yet have that information loaded)
The official site of the tournament, which will have game stories, rosters, stats and more can be found here.
While last year's tournament had three off days scheduled in, this year's only has two. The first and fourth days of round robin play and the quarterfinals will each have four games each day. The off days are before and after the quarterfinals on January 15.
How to Watch
TSN is airing every game that involves Team USA or Team Canada, plus the semifinals and medal games. NHL Network (NHLN) will carry TSN's feed of games involving Team USA.
There are currently entries for the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals on ESPN+ though no announcement about it had been made at time of writing.
Where "no broadcast available" is indicated, this means a North American broadcast. Broadcasts may be available from other countries. Games involving Finland are usually available with Finnish commentary free online at https://www.tvkaista.org/tv5/suora
All games below listed in Eastern Time.
Saturday, January 10
- 9:00 AM – Group B, Slovakia vs. United States (TSN, NHLN)
- 12:30 PM – Group B, Czechia vs. Finland (no broadcast available)
- 4:00 PM – Group A, Sweden vs. Hungary (no broadcast available)
- 7:30 PM – Group A, Switzerland vs. Canada (TSN)
Sunday, January 11
- 12:30 PM – Group B, Finland vs. Slovakia (no broadcast available)
- 4:00 PM – Group B, United States vs. Czechia (TSN, NHLN)
Monday, January 12
- 10:00 AM – Group A, Sweden vs. Switzerland (no broadcast available)
- 5:00 PM – Group A, Canada vs. Hungary (TSN)
Tuesday, January 13
- 9:00 AM – Group B, Czechia vs. Slovakia (no broadcast available)
- 12:30 PM – Group B, United States vs. Finland (TSN, NHLN)
- 4:00 PM – Group A, Canada vs. Sweden (TSN)
- 7:30 PM – Group A,Hungary vs. Switzerland (no broadcast available)
Thursday, January 15
- 9:00 AM – Quarterfinal #1 - TBD
- 12:30 PM – Quarterfinal #2 - TBD
- 4:00 PM – Quarterfinal #3 - TBD
- 7:30 PM – Quarterfinal #4 - TBD
Saturday, January 17
- 11:00 AM – Relegation game (no broadcast available)
- 3:00 PM – Semifinal #1 (TSN)
- 6:30 PM – Semifinal #2 (TSN)
Sunday, January 18
- 2:30 PM – Bronze Medal Game (TSN)
- 6:30 PM – Gold Medal Game (TSN)
TSN's schedule showed they'd be airing two quarterfinals as well as the semifinals, and medal games. Presumably they will air the quarterfinals games that the US and Canada are playing in and NHL Network would also air any playoff game involving Team USA. In 2024, the gold medal game was live on ESPN+, but aired on tape delay on NHL Network. The NHL Network broadcast schedule does not currently include any live games after the group stage. See TSN's complete coverage schedule of the U18s here.
