Hotels for IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship 2027

Germany hosts the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship in May 2027, splitting the tournament between two Rhineland cities: Düsseldorf's PSD Bank Dome, which stages the semi-finals and both medal games, and Mannheim's SAP Arena further south. Run from 14 to 30 May, the World Championship is the sport's genuine annual world title — unlike many other sports' "world championships", it is contested every single year by full senior national squads, often strengthened by NHL players whose clubs have already been eliminated from that season's Stanley Cup playoffs.

Düsseldorf's Altstadt, a dense cluster of breweries and bars along the Rhine known locally as the "longest bar in the world", makes an excellent base for the closing weekend, with trams running out to the dome in around twenty minutes. Stay centrally for the city's restaurants and nightlife between sessions, and book ahead: Germany's first home Worlds since co-hosting with France in 2017 will draw fans from across the sport's traditional strongholds.

The World Championship traces its roots to the 1920 Olympic ice hockey tournament in Antwerp, played at the city's Palais de Glace and won by Canada's Winnipeg Falcons — a result the IIHF only formally recognised as the first World Championship in 1982. For most of the century since, the title has been dominated by the sport's so-called "Big Six" nations: Canada, the United States, Sweden, Finland, Czechia (Czechoslovakia before 1993) and Russia (the Soviet Union before 1991) — between them they have won all but ten of the medals awarded since 1954.

Russia and Belarus have been suspended from IIHF competition since February 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine, but the tournament's history through the Cold War and beyond is inseparable from the decades of Soviet dominance that preceded it. Europe's leading club sides play their own separate competition, the Champions Hockey League, but it is the Worlds, run every single year without a break, that hockey followers treat as the sport's truest and most continuous world championship.

The PSD Bank Dome sits on Düsseldorf's northern edge, home to DEG Metro Stars ice hockey and, in May 2027, co-host with Mannheim's SAP Arena of the IIHF World Championship medal games. Düsseldorf is one of the Rhine's most elegant cities — the Altstadt's compact lanes hold Germany's so-called longest bar in the world, with the fashion houses of Königsallee a short tram ride away.

U-Bahn and tram lines link the dome to the centre in twenty minutes. Staying near the Hauptbahnhof or the Altstadt keeps restaurants and nightlife close, with an easy ride out on match days.