MINNEAPOLIS — Winter weather and all, it is not uncommon for countless folks to come visit the Twin Cities in late December and early January each year for the holidays, shopping and sports. In addition to those anticipated visitors in late 2025, Minneapolis-St. Paul will welcome thousands of hockey fans and players from around the world.

The Rink Live has learned that the bid put together by a Twin Cities sports coalition to host the 2026 World Junior Hockey Championships was accepted, and the State of Hockey will welcome one of the game’s biggest events starting on Dec. 26, 2025. An official announcement with venue details is expected on Friday, Jan. 5.

Officials from Twin Cities venues like Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul and 3M Arena at Mariucci on the University of Minnesota campus hosted site visits by representatives from the International Ice Hockey Federation and USA Hockey in the fall of 2023, showing off the arenas, their locker rooms, television broadcast capabilities and potential ticket sales.

With the 2026 tournament slated for the U.S., Seattle and the Twin Cities were the two finalists, with Minnesota reportedly landing the winning bid.

From humble beginnings in the 1970s, World Juniors has grown into one of the most-watched hockey tournaments on the planet, with the best U-20 teams from around the globe chasing gold medals. The 2024 tournament, hosted by Sweden, featured teams from 10 countries – the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Latvia, Czechia and Slovakia. Teams from Russia and Belarus are currently barred from competing due to the on-going war in Ukraine.

It is expected that the 18,000-seat Xcel Energy Center will be the tournament’s primary venue and site of the gold medal game, with the 10,000-seat 3M Arena at Mariucci serving as the secondary rink. Before putting in their winning bid for the tournament, Minnesota Sports and Events — a regional sports commission representing the Twin Cities — envisioned early round games possibly being played in places like Duluth, St. Cloud, Mankato and Bemidji, although the full schedule has not yet been finalized.

“We’re blessed with a number of really first-rate hockey facilities, so we’ve got a lot of options here in Minnesota,” said Matt Meunier of Minnesota Sports and Events, in a 2023 interview with The Rink Live after he visited last year’s event, which was hosted by Canada in Halifax and Moncton, Nova Scotia. “It’s cool because it’s not just a metro area, Minneapolis-St. Paul event. We could stage pool play games or pre-tournament matches throughout the state.”

It will be the third official visit to Minnesota for World Juniors, with the Twin Cities and Rochester hosting games in 1982, and Thief River Falls serving as the secondary site in 2005 when Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks was the primary host. Other American cities to host the tournament are Anchorage, Alaska in 1989, Boston in 1996, and Buffalo in 2011 and 2018.

The official tournament, sanctioned by the IIHF, began in 1977. But unofficial World Junior tournaments were held in 1974, 1975 and 1976, with a few of the 1975 tournament games played in the Twin Cities and Fargo.