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Following the sport
Curling makes very little sense on television until somebody tells you what the numbers are and which of these tournaments is the important one. Here is both.
Last updated 2026-08-18
The shape of a season#
Curling's calendar is stable from year to year even when the venues are not. In the northern hemisphere it runs roughly September to April, and it has a clear shape.
| When | What | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| September – December | Tour season | The World Curling Tour and the Grand Slam of Curling. Open-entry professional events with prize money, played mostly in Canada and increasingly elsewhere. This is where the best teams play each other most often, and where form is actually established. |
| Late October – November | Continental championships | The European Curling Championships and the Pan Continental Curling Championships. These matter more than their profile suggests: between them they decide most of the places at the world championships. |
| January – February | National championships | Every curling nation crowns a champion, usually one that then represents the country. In Canada the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the Brier are the two largest curling events in the world by audience. |
| March – April | World championships | Men, women, mixed doubles, juniors, seniors, wheelchair and wheelchair mixed doubles, each a separate event in a separate place. The men’s and women’s worlds are the season’s peak outside an Olympic year. |
| Every four years, February | The Olympics and Paralympics | Ten nations in men’s, women’s and mixed doubles; twelve in wheelchair. Qualification runs on ranking points accumulated over the preceding seasons plus a qualification event, so an Olympic place is won years in advance. |
Which events actually matter#
A newcomer reasonably assumes the Olympics is the pinnacle and everything else is a warm-up. That is true for audience and only partly true for anything else.
- The Olympics has the audience, and it is the reason most people ever see curling. It is also only ten nations, once every four years, over about ten days — which is a small sample of a sport.
- The world championships are the formal peak, and the record that gets quoted. Canada has 36 men's titles; nobody else is close.
- The Grand Slam of Curling is where the best teams meet each other most often. Open entry, prize money, and fields that ignore national quotas — so a Slam field can be deeper than a world championship's.
- The Brier and the Scotties, Canada's national championships, routinely draw crowds and television audiences larger than the world championships, and are harder to win than most nations' worlds.
For most of the last seventy years the hardest curling tournament on earth has been the one that decides who represents Canada. That is unusual enough to be worth knowing before you conclude that a team you have never heard of came from nowhere. More on the structure in competition formats.
Reading a broadcast#
Most of what is on screen is unexplained, permanently, on the reasonable assumption that the regular audience already knows.
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| A percentage next to a player | Their shot percentage so far — every stone scored out of four by a statistician. Leads always shoot higher than skips because their shots are easier. See statistics. |
| A clock counting down, sometimes stopped | Thinking time. It runs only while that team is deciding and stops the moment the stone reaches the tee line at the delivery end. 38 minutes for a ten-end game. |
| A small hammer or square by a team name | That team has last stone this end. |
| A row of numbers along the bottom | The score by end. Curling scoreboards on television are conventional; the ones in clubhouses are not, and that is a story of its own. |
| A dotted line drawn on the ice | A broadcast graphic showing the predicted path of the stone, not something the players can see. |
One thing that is not on screen and probably should be: which team has the hammer next end. It changes only when the team holding it scores, and following that is most of following the tactics. The hammer has a simulator for it.
What the commentators are saying#
Curling commentary is unusually technical and unusually unglossed. A handful of phrases account for most of it:
| You will hear | It means |
|---|---|
| “She’s got a four” | The skip has called weight number 4 — a stone that finishes at the top of the house. See calling weight by number. |
| “Hurry! Hurry hard!” | Sweep. Sweep harder. The volume is because the sweepers are moving and looking at the ice. |
| “Never” | Stop sweeping — or, more often, an exclamation that the stone is already short. |
| “That’s a good one to be light on” | A miss that finished short has left a useful position anyway. Curling commentary is generous. |
| “He’s going to want to tick that one” | Clip a centre guard sideways rather than remove it — although the no-tick rule has largely killed this. |
| “They’re looking at a big end” | One team is in position to score three or more. |
| “Draw the four-foot” | Put the stone in the innermost red ring; the most common shot call in the sport. |
Everything else is in the glossary, which is filterable and has an anchor per term.
Where to find schedules and results#
Where to find schedules and results#
- World Curling — results and recordsEvery championship game ever played, searchable by association, team and player. The primary record.
- World Curling — eventsThe championship calendar and, for many events, official streaming.
- CurlingZoneThe professional tour: schedules, draws, live scoring, rankings and shot percentages. What people in the sport actually use.
- The Grand Slam of CurlingThe premier tour series, its schedule and its qualification system.
- Curling CanadaThe Brier, the Scotties and the Canadian playdown system.
- The Curling NewsThe sport’s trade press — the place equipment disputes and governance actually get covered.
Why this page will not tell you the channel#
Broadcast rights change every cycle and differ in every territory. A page listing which service carries which event would be wrong within a year and confidently wrong within two, and a confidently wrong reference page is worse than no page.
What is stable is the list above. Start at the event's own site — World Curling streams a great deal of its own coverage, and national associations publish where their events can be watched in their own countries.
Sources#
- Grand Slam of Curling season scheduleFor the shape and timing of the tour season. Specific dates and venues change annually, which is why this page gives the shape rather than the dates.
- Primary World Curling — championship calendar World CurlingFor the placement of the continental and world championships in the season.
- Primary The Rules of Curling and Rules of Competition World Curling, 2025For thinking time, and for the qualification pathways into the world championships.