World Junior-B Curling Championships 2026

• December 8, 2026
  Event date:
• December 21, 2026
  Event end:

Second chance for the world’s junior nations

The World Junior-B Curling Championships 2026 give under-21 national teams that have not already secured a place at the World Junior Curling Championships one more route onto the top junior stage. The competition runs from December 8 to 21, 2026 in Lohja, Finland, with the junior men’s event played first and the junior women’s event following. The prize is promotion: six men’s teams and five women’s teams will qualify for the World Junior Curling Championships 2027, scheduled for Curl Aberdeen in Scotland from February 6 to 14, 2027.

The stakes are higher than in previous seasons. From 2027 the World Juniors expand to 16 teams per gender, played in two pools of eight, with the bottom three nations dropping back to the Junior-B event the following year.

Format and field

Junior-B is an open championship for World Curling member associations, and entries are confirmed by the national federations during the autumn, so the full list of nations is not yet published. For scale, the 2025 edition drew 20 men’s and 22 women’s teams, who played in round-robin groups before the playoffs.

The reigning champions are the United States in the men’s event, skipped by Caden Hebert, ahead of Switzerland and Poland, and Japan in the women’s event, skipped by Yuina Miura, ahead of the United States and Turkey. First held in 1999 and revived in 2016 after a break, the championship has become a regular December fixture on the junior calendar.

• Dates: December 8–21, 2026 (men first, then women)
• Promotion: 6 men’s and 5 women’s teams to the World Juniors 2027
• Defending champions: USA (men), Japan (women)

Host city and venue

All games are played at the Kisakallio Campus in Lohja, the Olympic and Paralympic training centre of the Sports Institute of Three Campuses, about an hour west of Helsinki. It is familiar territory for World Curling: Lohja hosted the 2025 Junior-B championships and the 2024 World Juniors, and in the same season also stages the World Wheelchair-B Curling Championship (November 22–30, 2026) and the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championship (January 4–10, 2027).

Tickets

No ticketing arrangements have been announced for the Junior-B championships. Details on spectator access, if any, will be released by the local organisers closer to the event.

Regions

• Europe & Rest of World

Location