PWHL executive vice president Amy Scheer spoke on league operations, including the PWHL Takeover Tour this week. She stated that it remains a long term goal, but the PWHL won't be taking their tour overseas just yet.
As the PWHL Takeover Tour prepares for the final stop of 2025-26, eyes are already turning to the 2026-27 season.
This season the PWHL Takeover Tour visited 11 markets across North America to play 16 neutral site games. Those cities; Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Washington in the United States; and Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Hamilton, Quebec City, and Hamilton in Canada, are considered top contenders to gain a permanent PWHL franchise through the imminent round of growth planned by the league.
The PWHL has stated openly they'll expand by 2-4 teams ahead of next season, with executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer stating that if she were a betting person, she's wager on a four-team expansion.
Ahead of the PWHL's sold out visit to Madison Square Garden, PWHL Advisory Board member Stan Kasten spoke on the immense interest the league continues to have from markets and venues looking to house an expansion team, but also for the league's highly popular Takeover Tour.
"Even though it will cost us more money, we're ready to expand," said Kasten. "There is a line of cities eager to have us there whether it's for a couple Takeover Tour games or for a full time team."
In the past, Kasten has discussed how the league would like to visit the European market as well.
No European Takeover Tour, Yet
Across the continent however in the league's first stop to Calgary for the PWHL Takeover Tour, Amy Scheer told The Canadian Press that while a European leg of the PWHL Takeover Tour remains a goal, it won't be coming next season.
"I don't think we're quite ready to leave North America yet," Scheer told The Canadian Press. "It's certainly on our mood board for an aspirational kind of thing, but maybe a little bit further out than next season."
European leagues and nations have continued to set attendance records for women's hockey just as the PWHL has done in North America.
In March 2025, Frolunda drew 8,442 for a home game against Lulea in SDHL action. This season Switzerland's PostFinance Women's League drew a new recod of 4,997 for a game between the ZSC Lions and EV Zug. Internationally, Czechia's 2025 World Championships set a new all-time total attendance mark for the tournament, drawing multiple sellout crowds of 5,859. At the 2026 Olympics, Italy's second preliminary round game against Sweden brought in 10,727 fans.
There are more than two dozen arenas across Europe in several different nations capable of housing more than 10,000 fans for hockey games. As the PWHL continues to run down the list of North American markets, inevitably, Europe will begin to factor into discussions.
The NHL has been visiting Europe for close to 90 years first sending teams to Europe in 1938 with the Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers playing nine games in England and France. Women's hockey as already booming in England and France during the 1930s, with the two nations regularly constructing women's national teams to face-off, including drawing 10,000 fans to a game in Paris, and 9,000 to what is now Wembley Arena in London.
More recently, NHL teams went through a span of playing preseason exhibitions against European clubs before the launch of the NHL Global Series, which launched in 2017 pegging NHL teams against one another in European venues for regular season competition similar to the PWHL Takeover Tour. Since its inception in 2017, the NHL Global Series has visited Stockholm (Sweden), Gothenburg (Sweden), Bern (Switzerland), Cologne (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Berlin (Germany), Lausanne (Switzerland), Prague (Czechia), Tampere (Finland), Düsseldorf (Germany), and Munich (Germany).