International Agenda: NHL Plans Strategy For World Cup Of Hockey 2028
Wednesday, March 18, 2026 at 05:02PM By Barry Janoff
March 18, 2026: Seeking to build on the positive International response from its 4 Nations Face-Off in 2025 and involvement in the 2026 Winter Olympics, the NHL and NHL Players' Assn. have unveiled details for the 2028 World Cup of Hockey.
Calgary and Edmonton will be the North American host cities, with Prague serving as the European host for the eight-team international tournament.
The World Cup semifinals and final will be played in Rogers Place in Edmonton.
The Calgary Flames' Scotia Place, scheduled to open for the 2027-28 season, and O2 Arena in Prague will each host six round-robin games and one elimination game.
“We think all three cities are going to do great things for this event,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said during a media conference at the NHLGM meetings at Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa. “We believe this will be a huge success . . . highlighting the best-on-best that we believe is the best of any sport with the world’s greatest athletes.”
The NHL and NHLPA will oversee the tournaments, but they are working with the International Ice Hockey Federation to see that “players in European leagues can play in the World Cup.”
The NHL schedule will be on hiatus for 17 days during the 2027-28 season. The schedule for the tournament, the eight competing nations, dates, and tickets and other activation will be shared as the event approaches.
Bettman said the World Cup would include “extensive ancillary programming” including fan events and media days.
“We’re going to be in extraordinarily strong, exciting, state-of-the-art buildings for all of it,” said Bettman. “So when you put the whole package together, particularly the Alberta component, it really was a bid that stood out and was gratifying to see.”
Bettman said the league would soon begin the bidding process for media and broadcast rights.
“We know there’s a worldwide appetite,” he said. “There have been inbound calls from media platforms wanting to make sure we call them and obviously we’ll talk to our partners in North America, Rogers in Canada and Disney/ESPN and TNT in the States. We think there will be robust interest and hopefully robust bidding.”
“We believe this will be a huge success . . . highlighting the best-on-best that we believe is the best of any sport with the world’s greatest athletes.”
This will be the fourth World Cup of Hockey. The U.S. won in 1996, Canada winning in 2004 and 2016.
The NHL and Players' Association also combined efforts to put on the 4 Nations Face-Off last year, the first best-on-best competition since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
"There is no international competition in sports that matches the passion, skill, and excitement of hockey's best-on-best coming together to represent their countries — last year's 4 Nations Face-Off and the recent Winter Olympics were just the latest example," said Bettman.
“We at the National Hockey League and our partners at the National Hockey League Players' Association can't wait to bring the World Cup of Hockey to 2028 to three spectacular venues in three cities that shine when staging big events."
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