With the 2025 IIHF women's World Championships in the books, the next major tournament headed toward the best women's hockey players in the world is the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.
USA won gold, Canada silver, and Finland took bronze in Czechia. They'll hold those honors into the 2026 World Championships. First however, they'll all meet again at the Olympic Games.
Following their gold medal game loss to Team USA, Canada immediately turned their eyes to the future.
"We had a couple of chances, we came up short, it’s part of it and it’s a process," said captain Marie-Philip Poulin. "It’s going to suck for a little bit, but we have to go back to work because we have a big tournament [Olympics] coming up in 2026."
Canada will enter the Milano Cortina Olympics as reigning champions after they won gold at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
"I think any world championship you want to win, but leading up to the Olympics, it’s even more amplified,” said defender Renata Fast. "It also gives us more motivation and more ways to reflect individually and collectively and figure out what we need to work on so that in 10 months or so we can be on the other side."
The 2026 Olympic Games will feature USA, Canada, Finland, Czechia, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Japan, Italy and at the moment Russia. If Russia is deemed ineligible, France will take their place.