Beside electing the IIHF Council for a new four-year term, allocating a big number of events in the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship program and the Olympic Qualification will be among the items on the agenda. While venues for some of the top events have already been known, there will be voting on tournaments especially in the lower divisions.

The 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship will take place in Cologne, Germany, and Paris, France, next year. The flagship event has been allocated for the upcoming years to Copenhagen and Herning, Denmark (2018), Bratislava and Kosice, Slovakia (2019) and Zurich and Lausanne, Switzerland (2020). The 2021 edition will be allocated next year.

One tier below Austria and Ukraine with its capital of Kyiv applied to host next year’s Division I Group A. The six-team event also includes Kazakhstan, another team relegated from the ongoing Worlds, Poland and Korea and the best two teams will be promoted to the top division for 2018.

For the Division I Group B Estonia applied with its capital of Tallinn while Ice Hockey UK entered a bid for Belfast for the event that will also see Japan, Lithuania, Croatia and the Netherlands participate.

The next IIHF World Junior Championship is set to take place in Montreal and Toronto, Canada, while in the U20’s Division I Group A Germany (with Bremerhaven) and Kazakhstan (Almaty) entered bids for the event where also Belarus, Austria, Norway and France will battle for promotion.

The 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship will take place in the Slovak cities of Poprad and Spisska Nova Ves while the 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship will be staged in Plymouth, USA.

The 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 Women’s World Championship will be assigned this week with the only bid coming from the Czech Republic with the cities of Prerov and Zlin that successfully hosted the event in 2012 and set an attendance record that was only beaten this year by St. Catharines, Canada.

Click here to see all tournaments, participants and applicants for the 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship program.

The 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, Korea, will be another item on the agenda. While there will be discussions about using some of the lower division events from the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship program as test events in the city of Gangneung where the ice sport facilities are being built, the Olympic Qualification continues next season.

On the men’s side the preliminary rounds were already played this season and the Final Olympic Qualification is set to take place from 1st to 4th September 2016. Belarus will host Group D at Minsk Arena with Slovenia, Denmark and Poland. Group E will be hosted by Latvia at Arena Riga with Germany, Austria and Japan. And Group F will take place at the classic Jordal Amfi rink in Oslo with host Norway, France, Kazakhstan and Italy. Due to the dates the teams will have the possibility of using their NHL players.

The top-8 teams of the 2015 IIHF Men’s World Ranking – Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, USA, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Slovakia – as well as host Korea are already qualified and will be joined by the three tournament winners.

On the women’s side the qualification begins in autumn. While the top-5 teams of the 2016 IIHF Women’s World Ranking – USA, Canada, Finland, Russia and Sweden – as well as host Korea are already qualified, two more teams will be searched.

In total a record 29 countries entered teams for the Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament and the qualification process. The hosts will be named during the upcoming Congress and in each of the groups in the four-stage qualification the top-seeded team has the right to host the event. This means Switzerland can host Group C of the Final Olympic Qualification set to take place 9-12 February 2017 that also includes the Czech Republic, Denmark and a qualifier while Japan has the right to host Group D with Germany, Austria and a qualifier from the preliminary round.

Click here to see the groups and dates of the Olympic Qualification.