Etiquette and the Spirit of Curling
Curling has a code of conduct printed on page two of its rulebook, before any of the rules. It is not decoration: it is the enforcement mechanism, and it has been tested in public and held.
Last updated 2026-08-18
The text itself#
The World Curling rulebook opens, before rule R1 and before the table of contents has finished, with this:
Curling is a game of skill and of tradition. A shot well executed is a delight to see and it is also a fine thing to observe the time-honoured traditions of curling being applied in the true spirit of the game. Curlers play to win, but never to humble their opponents. A true curler never attempts to distract opponents, nor to prevent them from playing their best, and would prefer to lose rather than to win unfairly.
Curlers never knowingly break a rule of the game, nor disrespect any of its traditions. Should they become aware that this has been done inadvertently, they will be the first to divulge the breach.
While the main object of the game of curling is to determine the relative skill of the players, the spirit of curling demands good sportsmanship, kindly feeling and honourable conduct.
This spirit should influence both the interpretation and the application of the rules of the game and also the conduct of all participants on and off the ice.
The last sentence is the one that does the work. It is not a preamble about being nice; it is an instruction about how to read the rest of the document. Where a rule is ambiguous, the Spirit of Curling decides it.
The rule that matters#
Everything else on this page is manners. This one is structural.
If you touch a moving stone with any part of your body or equipment — a burned stone — you say so, immediately, out loud, before anybody asks. You do it if nobody saw. You do it if it costs you the end. You do it in the final of a championship.
Read rule R9 and notice what is missing. Between the tee line at the delivery end and the far hog line, if a moving stone is touched by the team it belongs to, "the touched stone is removed from play immediately by that team." There is no procedure for detection, no appeal, no penalty for having been caught. The rule is written on the assumption that the offending team will report itself, because at club level nobody is watching and at elite level a brush handle grazing a stone is invisible at broadcast resolution.
A sport that did not have this convention would need officials on every sheet, and curling — which has one umpire per sheet only in officiated play, and none at all in the overwhelming majority of games ever played — does not. Self-report is not an ornament on the rules. It is the substitute for enforcement.
The time it was tested in public#
The strongest evidence that any of this is real happened in November 2015.
New brush-head fabrics had turned out to let sweepers steer stones. Every brush involved was legal; the rules said almost nothing about brush-head material. Teams using them were winning, and were sponsored by the manufacturers making them.
Twenty-two of the top men's and women's teams in the world signed an agreement to stop using them. No rule required it and no governing body had yet acted. They gave up an advantage they were entitled to keep, because the games had stopped being curling. The full story is on brooms, brushes and Broomgate.
The practical list#
Almost all of it reduces to two principles: do not interfere with the other team's shot, and do not waste anybody's time. Everything below is one of those two applied to a situation.
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Before the game | Shake hands with all four opponents and say "good curling". This is universal and it is not optional in the sense that not doing it is odd, though nobody will say anything. |
| When the other team is throwing | Stand still, between the hog lines, at the side of the sheet. Do not move, do not talk across the sheet, and do not stand where the thrower can see you. |
| While your own team is throwing | Be ready. Have your stone cleaned and be in the hack when it is your turn — the single biggest cause of slow games is people who are not ready. |
| If you touch a moving stone | Say so, immediately, before anybody asks. This is the one that matters. See below. |
| Crossing the sheet | Wait until the stone has come to rest, then cross behind the house or behind the hack. Never walk across a live sheet, and never across a neighbouring one. |
| When you have lost | Concede. Playing out four dead ends to make a point is the rudest thing available in curling. |
| After the game | Shake hands again, and traditionally the winning team buys the first round. This is called broomstacking and in many clubs it is more or less the point. |
Where to stand, and why it is a rule#
This one is not merely etiquette — it is rule R4, and it has a penalty.
While the other team is delivering, the non-delivering players take stationary positions along the side lines, between the courtesy lines. Those are the short lines four feet outside each hog line, and they exist precisely so there is an agreed place to stand where an umpire's view of the hog line is not blocked.
Two exceptions: the skip and vice-skip may stand behind the back line at the playing end, provided they do not interfere with the other team's skip choosing where to stand; and the player throwing next may stand to the side behind the hacks at the delivery end.
The rulebook then says plainly that players must not take any position, or cause any motion, which could obstruct, interfere with, distract or intimidate the delivering team. If they do, the delivering player may choose to redeliver the stone. And improper position by the delivering team costs them the stone outright.
Conceding#
Curling expects you to concede a lost game, and it is not a grudging expectation. Making an opponent play out four dead ends to prove a point is the rudest thing the sport offers.
The mechanics: you concede only while you are the delivering team. If a team is arithmetically eliminated — cannot reach a tie with the stones left — the game can be stopped there; they may finish the current end but not start another. See scoring for how the score is recorded when a game ends early.
There is no shame attached, at any level. Teams concede world championship games.
Broomstacking#
The drink after the game, traditionally bought by the winners for the losers. The name is literal: brooms were stacked by the fire while everybody sat down.
It is worth stating plainly that in most clubs this is not an afterthought. Curling's social structure is the reason clubs survive — a weekly game plus an hour afterwards is a far stronger thing than a weekly game — and a club whose members leave straight after the handshake tends to be a club with a membership problem. Running a club goes into why.
If you are worried about getting it wrong#
Do not be. Genuinely.
Curling clubs are, as a class, among the most welcoming sporting institutions that exist, for the straightforward reason that they need members and they know it. Nobody minds that you stood in the wrong place. Somebody will quietly tell you, once, and that will be the end of it.
Three things are worth actually remembering on a first visit, and they are all in the first paragraph of this section:
- Stand still when somebody else is throwing.
- Be ready when it is your turn.
- Say so if you touch a moving stone.
That is the whole thing. See your first time on the ice for the rest of what to expect.
Sources#
- Primary The Rules of Curling — the Spirit of Curling, R4 and R9 World Curling, 2025The Spirit of Curling text quoted in full above, the position-of-players rules and their penalties, and the burned-stone procedure that assumes self-reporting.
- Curling’s only scandal: how Broomgate changed the game forever CBC SportsOn the November 2015 players’ agreement, which is the clearest public test the Spirit of Curling has had.