Recently the Finnish national team celebrated winning the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship in front of tens of thousands of fans in the cities of Helsinki and Tampere. In three years hockey fans will celebrate the Worlds in Finland with the main venue in Tampere presented at a press conference today.

The city of Tampere was chosen as the main venue for the 2022 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship in Finland and today more details about the new arena have been announced that will accommodate approximately 13,500 fans in an ice hockey configuration and also be the new home for the cities two top-league clubs Ilves and Tappara. The arena will also feature a second ice sheet that can serve as practice arena during the 2022 Worlds.

Tampere is one of the largest cities in Finland with a population of 225,000 in the city and almost a million within a 100-km radius. It is centrally located in the country.

One preliminary round group, two quarter-final games, both semi-final games and the medal games will be played at the Tampere Deck Arena, which is under construction and estimated to open in the later part of the year 2021.

“For us this is great news. We really look forward to coming to Tampere. The brand-new arena will offer us an outstanding setting for the event. The location next to the railway station is excellent. The arena is easily and can be ecologically reached from around Finland. In addition, the involvement of the city is outstanding, which means a lot for the organizer,” says Heikki Hietanen, General Secretary of the Organizing Committee. 

For Tampere, a city known as the hockey capital of Finland, it is an honor to host the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

“Getting a new arena to Tampere has been a long process. The planning started already in 2006 so for the city, this new arena is a huge thing. When looking from the IIHF’s perspective it’s great that in 2022 the World Championship is organized in the most modern arena in Europe,” says IIHF Vice President and former Finnish Ice Hockey Association President Kalervo Kummola, who himself lives in Tampere. 

Lauri Lyly, Mayor of Tampere, also states the symbolic meaning of the venue: “The first ever IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship played in Finland was the 1965 event organized in the then newly-built Hakametsa Ice Hall in Tampere. In 2022 we will again have a brand new arena built on Tampere Deck. Also, our tram network will open conveniently before the event.”

The old Hakametsa rink in Tampere also hosted the Worlds in 1982, 1991, 1997 and 2003. But in the near future the teams will move to a new building in the heart of the city.

SRV, the company responsible for the building of the Tampere Deck and Arena, is delighted for the fact that the first major event of the new arena is the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, which means the world to the hockey-loving Finns and fans from many other countries who will visit Tampere for the event.

“The modern multi-purpose arena will offer players, fans and partners first-class conditions to enjoy the event,” says SRV Vice President Timo Nieminen.

Click here to visit the arena website.

The 2017 IIHF Annual Congress awarded the 2022 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship to Finland with the cities of Tampere and Helsinki in the bid. Negotiations on the second venue are still ongoing and the location for the other preliminary-round group and two quarter-final games will be announced later.

The 2022 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship will take place from 13 to 29 May 2022. The previous Worlds will be hosted in Zurich and Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2020; and in Minsk (Belarus) and Riga (Latvia) in 2021.