The Grand Slam of Curling will make a stop south of the border next season. It's the first step in a plan to go global.
The Curling Group, which organizes the series, said Thursday that Lake Tahoe, Nev., will be part of the circuit's five-event schedule for the 2025-26 campaign.
"We have big plans and we're going to go everywhere," said The Curling Group chief executive officer Nic Sulsky. "It just so happens that the U.S. is the first international country."
The 4,200-seat Tahoe Blue Event Center will host the Kioti GSOC Tahoe event from Nov. 4-9.
Sulsky said he hopes curling fans from around North America will make the trip and noted there are "great curling communities" in the area and throughout nearby California.
"It's a pretty exciting spot to go to," Sulsky said from Toronto. "As we started digging into it, the more we learned about the area, the more we learned about the curling community and the fact that they had a really new facility, it just checked all the boxes.
"And then they just turned out to be really open and excited organizers. It just made great sense for us."
The 2025-26 season has unusual dates due to the Montana's Canadian Curling Trials in late November and the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in February.
The Sept. 23-28 WFG Masters will open the Grand Slam season at the Western Fair Sports Centre in London, Ont. The Hearing Life Tour Challenge will be held at the Silent Ice Centre in Nisku, Alta., from Oct. 14-19.
The Co-op Canadian Open is set for Dec. 16-21 at Saskatoon's Merlis Belsher Place and the Jan. 6-11 AMJ Players' Championship will move from its longtime home in Toronto to the Southeast Event Centre in Steinbach, Man.
Organizers also plan to hold tier-two events at the London, Nisku and Saskatoon stops. Those competitions will feature up to 32 additional teams.
The Curling Group purchased the Grand Slam series from Sportsnet last April. The circuit features the top men's and women's teams in the world and includes a total prize money pool of $2 million.
Sulsky said The Curling Group is "in conversations" with venues and locations all over the world as it looks ahead to the new quadrennial. Markets like Japan, Scotland, Switzerland, South Korea, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland are among those being considered for Grand Slam events, he said.
"Everything is in the works right now," he said. "Our intention is to go to other international locations in the fall of 2026, which locations those are we haven't decided yet."
The Grand Slam series, which made its debut in 2001, previously planned to hold an event in Las Vegas in January 2021 but it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The world men's curling championship was held in Sin City in 2018 and 2022. Las Vegas also hosted the Continental Cup on four occasions.
The most recent U.S. host of the world women's curling championship was Bismarck, N.D., in 2002.
The Curling Group has two new events on the calendar next month.
The first Rio Mare Battle of the Sexes is set for April 7 in Toronto on the eve of the Players' Championship at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.
The top-ranked Ottawa-based team skipped by Rachel Homan will play the top-ranked men's side skipped by Scotland's Bruce Mouat in an eight-end skins game.
The following week, the inaugural TCG all-star game will be played in Tennessee. A skins game, celebrity pro-am and skills competition will be held April 15-16 at Tee Line Nashville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2025.
Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press
