For the past several years, the annual summer U-18 international tournament currently known as the Hlinka Gretzky Cup has moved back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean – hosted by Canada one year and co-hosted by Czechia and Slovakia the next – but that arrangement will probably soon end.

The pattern will probably continue for this year and next, but 2026 will probably be the last time Canada hosts, according to an article in the Czech website Sport.cz. Starting in 2027, the Czechs and Slovaks will likely return to being full-time co-hosts, as was the case before 2018.

“From 2027 onward, it will probably only be played here and in Slovakia,” said Jan Černý, general secretary of the Czech Ice Hockey Association, who noted the 2026 tournament will return to Canada to replace the one that was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic. “But everything will still be discussed. Hockey Canada is not very keen on organizing the tournament again, as it now hosts almost every World Junior Championship, and in the future, the U-18 World Championship will also be held every other year in North America, so there may already be a glut.”

Indeed, not only does Canada host the IIHF World Juniors so frequently, but they have been held in Alberta – the province where Canada stages its Hlinka Gretzky Cups – twice in the past few years with another one upcoming in 2027. The IIHF announced in September that the USA would host the U-18 Worlds in 2027 and 2029.

Černý also mentioned the preference of the other participating European teams to return the tournament to Europe full-time to reduce travel costs.

“We see it as very prestigious,” Černý said about the annual summer U-18 tournament. “When the Slovak side hesitated for a while whether to continue, we were willing to take on the whole tournament. It’s a kind of initiation event for talented players at the beginning of their draft year.”

This year’s Hlinka Gretzky Cup is tentatively scheduled to take place Aug. 11 to 16 in Brno, Czechia and Trenčín, Slovakia. On the Czech side, Brno replaces Břeclav, which first hosted the event in 2002 and most recently hosted in 2023. That year, Canada beat Czechia 3-2 in overtime before a sellout crowd of 4,711. But while attendance was great throughout the tournament, the especially humid weather in central Europe that August affected the playing conditions in the old barn.

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In past years, Canada has balked at playing in the Břeclav group due to the rink conditions.

“It’s a shame for us because the fans were great, but the Břeclav arena is not suitable for television production, and when the weather conditions are worse and it rains, it’s foggy and dewy and it doesn’t look good on TV,” said Černý.

The arena in Brno, which is home to Kometa Brno of the Czech Extraliga, holds 7,700 and Černý believes it would draw crowds at least as large as what are seen in Břeclav. With a population of around 400,000, Brno is the second-largest city in the Czech Republic after Prague and, much like Břeclav, is easily accessible to Trenčín, Bratislava and Vienna by rail and highway.

A new 12,714-seat arena is also due to open in Brno in 2026, which would become Kometa’s new home rink and could be used to host a World Championship in the near future. It might be a little too large, though, for the U-18 summer tournament, whose name could also change.

The event, which was first held in 1991 in Japan, was known by a number of monikers in its early years and became the Ivan Hlinka Memorial after the Czech hockey star’s untimely death in 2004. Wayne Gretzky’s name was attached in 2018 when Hockey Canada became involved but, if that arrangement is about to change, so too could the name. 

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