2026 BKT World Women’s Curling Championship kicks off Saturday in Calgary

A quest for a third straight gold medal by a Canadian team will get underway Saturday when the 2026 BKT World Women’s Curling Championship, presented by Pharmasave, gets underway at the WinSport Event Centre in Calgary,

Kerri Einarson’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts championship team from Gimli, Man., will open its quest for a world championship with a pair of opening-day games.

Einarson, backed up by vice-skip Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard, lead Karlee Burgess, alternate Krysten Karwacki, team coach Reid Carruthers and national coach Viktor Kjell, will take on Sweden, skipped by Olympic mixed doubles gold-medallist Isabella Wranaa, Saturday at 2 p.m. (all times Mountain).

Later Saturday, Team Canada is on the ice against newly crowned U.S. champs Team Delaney Strouse, who will be making its World Women’s Championship debut.

Team Canada will close out its opening weekend Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. against China’s Team Rui Wang.

Team Einarson will be looking to follow up on the back-to-back gold medals claimed by Team Rachel Homan at the 2024 (Sydney, N.S.) and 2025 (Uijeongbu, South Korea) World Women’s Championships.

It will be the fourth time that Einarson has skipped Team Canada at the BKT World Women’s Curling Championship. Her teams won bronze in 2022 in Prince George, B.C., and in 2023 at Sandviken, Sweden. She was also supposed to skip Canada at the 2020 World Championship but that event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will be the final year of the 13-team single round-robin format for World Women’s and Men’s Curling Championships. Beginning with the 2027 events, World Curling has announced the fields will be expanded to 18 teams competing in two pools of nine.

The 13-team field in Calgary is rounded out by Australia’s Team Helen Williams, Denmark’s Team Madeleine Dupont, Italy’s Team Stefania Constantini, Japan’s Team Satsuki Fujisawa (coached by Calgary’s J.D. Lind), Norway’s Team Torlid Bjoernstad, Scotland’s Team Fay Henderson, South Korea’s Team Eunji Gim, Switzerland’s Team Xenia Schwaller and Turkey’s Team Dilsat Yildiz.

Round-robin play will run through to Friday, March 20, with the top six teams making the playoffs; no tiebreakers will be played, so ties for playoff spots will be broken based on head-to-head results, and if that doesn’t resolve the tie, then the pre-game Last-Shot Draw distances will be used to break ties.

The top two teams from round-robin play will be seeded directly into the semifinals on March 21 at 4 p.m., while third will play sixth and fourth will play fifth in the qualifying-round games on March 21 at 10 a.m.

The winners of the qualifying-round games will advance to the semifinals. The semifinal winners will play for gold on March 22 at 3 p.m., with the semifinal losers battling for bronze on March 22 at 9 a.m.

Ticket information, the list of teams, schedule information and live scoring can be found on the event website, www.curling.ca/2026worldwomen/.

It’s the 20th time that Canada has hosted the World Women’s Championship since it began in 1979 in Perth, Scotland, and the second time it’s happened in Calgary. 

Canada has won a leading 19 gold medals at the World Women’s since 1979, followed by Switzerland with 10 and Sweden with eight.

TSN/RDS2, the official broadcast partners of Curling Canada’s Season of Champions, will provide live coverage of Canada’s round-robin games, in addition to all playoff games. CLICK HERE for their complete broadcast schedule.