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With the 4 Nations Face-Off coming up next week, marking the return of “best-on-best” International Hockey, the IIHF Council ruled on whether or not to bring Russia and Belarus back into their international hockey tournaments. The IIHF council will continue to ban Russia and Belarus from any of its championship competitions for the 2025-26 season.
Following its latest meeting, the #IIHF Council decided not to reintegrate the Russian and Belarusian National and Club Teams to its championships for the 2025-2026 season.
— IIHF (@IIHFHockey) February 4, 2025
Read more at https://t.co/ldDBa42X8a: https://t.co/cBTB9itf7h pic.twitter.com/1w08DAFrg0
As part of the ruling, the IIHF Council said:
The IIHF Council believes it is not yet safe to reintegrate the Russian and Belarusian National and Club Teams to its championships for the 2025-2026 season. As the current security conditions do not allow the necessary requirements for the organization of tournaments guaranteeing the safety of all, the IIHF must maintain the current status quo until further notice.
They added that Russia and Belarus have been barred from International Competition ever since their governments decided to invade Ukraine. Whether you agree or disagree with the decision is totally up to you and your view on world politics. For the sporting world, it is another season where the best International players from Russia will not compete on the world stage.
IIHF Will Continue to Monitor the Situation
As per the IIHF’s continuing mandate, they will continue to monitor the situation closely. The next time the IIHF Council will determine whether it is safe to incorporate Russia and Belarus back into their International Hockey tournaments for the 2026/27 season will be in May 2026 at the IIHF Council meeting ahead of the IIHF Annual Congress.
So, for at least another season, Russia will not be playing at the IIHF World Championships on the Men’s and Women’s sides. Similar to Belarus. While this decision did not shut the door on Olympic participation in 2026 in Milan, there is serious doubt that Russian athletes will participate in that event.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will have the final say on whether Russia will participate in the Olympics. However, the Olympic Games is viewed as an IIHF World Championship event on the calendar, so Russian athletes will continue to be banned from team competition.
Individual Russian athletes can participate in the Olympics after meeting certain criteria. But that does not apply to team sports.
The 2026 Olympic Winter Games will be the first time that NHL players will participate in the games since the 2014 Sochi Games. There, Canada won back-to-back gold medals before the Russian Olympic Athletes won the gold medal in 2018.
In different variations of the Soviet Union, Russia, and the Unifed Team, they have won the Olympic gold nine times. They have also won 27 gold medals at the IIHF World Championships, plus 14 golds at the World Junior level. The last medal Russia won in Ice Hockey was a silver medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, just a week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Since then, Russia and Belarus have been banned from international ice hockey tournaments. That ban will continue next season and potentially beyond.
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