The men's tournament in

ice hockey at the 2026 Winter Olympics The Ice hockey at the Olympic Games, ice hockey competitions of the 2026 Winter Olympics will be played at two venues located in the Milan cluster: the PalaItalia and one of the Fiera Milano pavilions. The men's tournament will have 12 teams co ...

will take place in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, Italy between 11 and 22 February 2026. Twelve countries

qualified Qualification may refer to: Processes * Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS), a competitive contract procurement process established by the United States Congress * Process qualification, ensures that manufacturing and production processes can ...

for the tournament; eight of them did so automatically by virtue of their

ranking A ranking is a relationship between a set of items, often recorded in a list, such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than", or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak ...

by the

International Ice Hockey Federation The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF; ; ) is a worldwide governing body for ice hockey. It is based in Zurich, Switzerland, and has 84 member countries. The IIHF maintains the IIHF World Ranking based on international ice hockey to ...

, one,

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, automatically qualified as hosts, while the three others took part in a qualification tournament.

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

is banned from competing due to the countries' invasion of Ukraine.

Venues

Qualified teams

Format

The twelve teams are split into three groups of four teams each, in which they play against each team once. The top team of each group and the best second-ranked team advance to the quarterfinals, while all other teams play a qualification round. A knockout system will be used after the group stage.

Rosters

NHL participation

On 2 February 2024, the IIHF announced that an agreement had been reached with the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

(NHL) for a break in its regular season to allow the league's players to participate in the Olympics for the first time since 2014. The NHL was originally scheduled to compete in 2022 as well but opted out due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Preliminary round

''All times are local (

UTC+1 +01:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +01:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2019-02-07T23:28:34+01:00. This time is used in: *Central European Time * West Africa Time * Western European Summer Time **Brit ...

).''

Tiebreak criteria

In each group, teams are ranked according to the following criteria: #Number of points (three points for a regulation-time win, two points for an overtime or shootout win, one point for an overtime or shootout defeat, no points for a regulation-time defeat); #In case two teams tied on points, the result of their head-to-head match determines the ranking; #In case three or four teams are tied on points, the following criteria apply (if, after applying a criterion, only two teams remained tied, the result of their head-to-head match determined their ranking): ##Points obtained in head-to-head matches between the teams concerned; ##Goal differential in head-to-head matches between the teams concerned; ##Number of goals scored in head-to-head matches between the teams concerned; ##If three teams remained tied, result of head-to-head matches between each of the teams concerned and the remaining team in the group (points, goal difference, goals scored); ##Place in 2025

IIHF World Ranking The IIHF World Ranking is a ranking of the performance of the national ice hockey teams of member countries of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). It is based on a formula giving points for each team's placings at IIHF-sanctioned tour ...

Group A

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Group B

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Group C

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Ranking after preliminary round

Following the completion of the preliminary round, all teams will be ranked 1D through 12D. The semifinals will then be reseeded according to this ranking. To determine this ranking, the following criteria will be used in the order presented: #higher position in the group #higher number of points #better goal difference #higher number of goals scored for #better

Playoff round

Bracket

Teams will be reseeded based on the preliminary round ranking after the quarterfinals.

Playoffs

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Quarterfinals

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Semifinals

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Bronze medal game

Gold medal game

Final ranking

The places five to twelve were ranked by their preliminary round group placement and then points and goal difference.

References

External links

IIHF website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ice hockey at the 2026 Winter Olympics - Men's tournament Men's tournament

2026 Predicted and scheduled events * January 1 – Bulgaria is expected to adopt the euro and become the 21st member state of the eurozone. * January 6 – The 2025 Jubilee will end on this day. * February 5 – The New START Treat ...