🥌Competitions

Contested at the very first Winter Games in Chamonix, where Great Britain won, though the IOC did not recognise those medals until 2006. After demonstration appearances in 1988 and 1992, curling returned as a full medal sport at Nagano 1998, and mixed doubles was added at PyeongChang 2018. Ten teams contest each of the three events through a single round robin, semifinals and a final. Canada leads the all-time medal table with 14, followed by Sweden with 13, and the tournament reliably draws the largest television audiences the sport ever sees.

Launched as the Scotch Cup in 1959, a Canada-versus-Scotland affair won by Ernie Richardson, and expanded through the Air Canada Silver Broom era into a full world event. Thirteen teams now play a nine-day round robin followed by qualification games, semifinals and a final. Canada dominated the first four decades and holds 36 titles, but has not won since 2017; Sweden claimed its 13th in 2026 through Niklas Edin, whose eighth personal title made him the most successful skip in the event's history.

First held in Perth, Scotland, and won by Switzerland, twenty years after the men's event began. It has been the most competitively balanced of curling's majors in the modern era: Canada leads with 19 titles, but Switzerland won four in a row from 2019 to 2023 through Silvana Tirinzoni and Alina Patz, Canada answered with Rachel Homan's back-to-back wins in 2024 and 2025, and Switzerland took it back in Calgary in 2026 with a 7-5 win over Canada.

The oldest continental championship and, for most of its history, the tournament that determined which European nations reached the worlds. It is contested in A, B and C divisions with promotion and relegation, so it doubles as the development ladder for smaller federations. Sweden's Niklas Edin holds the men's record with eight titles and Anette Norberg won seven on the women's side. Because it is held in November, it also functions as the season's first real test of new team line-ups.

Canada's men's championship and, by most estimates, the hardest single tournament in curling, because the depth of the domestic field means several teams capable of winning a world title fail to qualify. It has run since 1927 and is the origin of much of the sport's culture and vocabulary. Its attendance record of 281,985, set in Edmonton in 2005, has never been approached by any other curling event. Brad Gushue holds the modern records with six titles and 23 appearances.

Canada's women's championship, first contested in 1961 and rebranded with its current sponsor identity in the 1980s, when it became the most-watched women's curling event in the world. Provincial and territorial champions plus a defending Team Canada compete in pools and a page playoff, with the winner going to the world championship. Colleen Jones and Jennifer Jones share the record of six titles apiece; Rachel Homan has five and won 22 consecutive games at the event across 2024 and 2025.

Created in 2001-02 when eighteen of Canada's leading men's teams boycotted the Brier to build a players' circuit, with a women's series added from 2006-07. Each event carries a purse of at least CAD 100,000 and invites the world's top-ranked teams regardless of nationality, which makes it the closest thing curling has to a global professional tour. The four original events, the Masters, Canadian Open, National and Players' Championship, are treated as majors; completing all four is a career Grand Slam.

The fastest-growing event in the sport, contested by two-player teams over eight ends with five stones each and pre-placed stones. Twenty nations reach the championship itself, but the qualification event has expanded rapidly, with a record 33 entries for the 2026 edition, up from a previous high of 29 in 2024. Because it requires only two athletes and less ice time, mixed doubles has become the main route by which smaller federations reach international competition, and Olympic inclusion since 2018 has accelerated that.