The 2028 World Cup of Hockey will be the fourth installment of the World Cup of Hockey by the National Hockey League. It will be played in February 2028. Games are expected to be played over 12 days and include 17 games in two host cities, to be selected in March 2026. The competition is expected to include eight teams from individual countries in North America and Europe.[1][2][3]
The NHL has announced that the tournament will be played at 2 venues; 1 in North America and another in Europe, but have yet to confirm the exact host cities and arenas. On December 9, 2025, the NHL revealed that they had narrowed down the list of potential host cities to 16, with 10 cities bidding for hosting rights in North America, and another 6 cities in Europe.[4]
Background
The previous edition of the World Cup of Hockey was held in 2016, and was the last international ice hockey tournament until 2025 to feature full rosters of National Hockey League players. On February 2, 2024, at a press conference before the 2024 NHL All-Star Game, NHL commissionerGary Bettman announced that the NHL and NHL Players' Association had reached an agreement to release NHL players for the 2026 and 2030 Olympic Games, as well as bring back the World Cup of Hockey in 2028 and 2032, following an 8-year hiatus on NHL participation in international competitions.[5]
In order to promote the return of NHL players to the international stage, the league organized the 4 Nations Face-Off which was played in February 2025 between Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the United States.
The NHL has not announced which teams will be participating, although they have confirmed that all eight teams will be representing individual countries unlike the previous tournament which included Team Europe and Team North America.[1] It is likely that all the Big Six countries except Russia will be participating. Russia's participation remains uncertain as they are still under an IIHF suspension due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, and although the NHL is not obligated to enforce this suspension at the World Cup of Hockey, the league had excluded them from the 4 Nations Face-Off and has announced that they will "continue to monitor world events before a decision is made".[1][6]
The decision to include teams may also be dependent on the possibility of the country forming a team entirely of NHL players, regardless of a country's IIHF ranking at the time of the tournament.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Canada 
Finland 
Sweden 
United States 
Czechia 
Germany 
Slovakia 
Switzerland 
Russia 