After an especially memorable 2023 World Junior Championship, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced the schedule for the 2024 event, which will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, Dec. 26, 2023 to Jan. 5, 2024.

Gothenburg was initially due to host this event in 2022, but a lot of rescheduling had to be done in the wake of the pandemic. After swapping years with Canada, Sweden will host the World Juniors for the first time since 2014.

The tournament will be played in its entirety in the city of Gothenburg, with Group A playing in the Scandanavium and Group B playing in the Frolundaborg.

The game schedule for the #WorldJuniors in Gothenburg has been released!
🔥Which game do you not want to miss?🔥

To the game schedule👉🏽https://t.co/SBAo7oRltA
🎫Ticket release on 2 March@IIHFHockey pic.twitter.com/vS2kgVpAmt

— 2024 IIHF #WorldJuniors (@iihf_wjc) February 15, 2023

Defending champion Canada will be joined in Group A by Finland, Sweden, Germany and Latvia. Group B will be comprised of 2023 silver medalist Czechia, 2023 bronze medalist USA, Switzerland, Slovakia and Norway, which earned promotion to the top level earlier this season.

Slovakia and Czechia will have the honors of playing the tournament's opening game on Dec. 26. The opening day schedule will also included Canada vs. Finland, USA vs. Norway and Sweden vs. Latvia.

The IIHF also noted that this schedule  "is applicable as long as the Russian and Belarusian National Teams are not reintegrated into the 2024 IIHF Championship Program." Russia and Belarus are currently barred from competition over their involvement in the invasion of Ukraine. Russia was supposed to host the 2023 World Juniors, but had those rights stripped last year.

Given the status of the war in Ukraine, it appears highly unlikely the IIHF will reinstate Russia and Belarus in the near future, but the mere mentioning of that possibility certainly raises eyebrows. 

Should those teams be reinserted into the tournament field, the IIHF will likely have to play this year's tournament in an expanded format with two teams getting relegated instead of one. Assuming that does not happen however, the schedule is set. 

The tournament host has a lot of say in how the games are scheduled. Canadian fans will likely not be too pleased that New Year's Eve, a night traditionally reserved for a Canadian matchup with one of the other top contending teams, will feature a game between the defending champs and Germany.

Host Sweden will get the marquee game as they've scheduled Finland for the New Year's Eve rivalry matchup.

Other games of note on the schedule include USA vs. Czechia and Canada vs. Sweden on Dec. 29 in a pair of games that could have massive seeding consequences for the playoff round.

You can see the complete IIHF World Junior Championship Schedule here.

Team USA's 2024 WJC Schedule

Dec. 26 vs. Norway, 11 a.m. ET

Dec. 28 vs. Switzerland, 11 a.m. ET

Dec. 29 vs. Czechia, 11 a.m. ET

Dec. 31 vs. Slovakia, 6 a.m. ET

Team Canada's 2024 WJC Schedule

Dec. 26 vs. Finland, 8:30 a.m. ET

Dec. 27 vs. Latvia, 1:30 p.m. ET

Dec. 29 vs. Sweden, 1:30 p.m. ET

Dec. 31 vs. Germany, 1:30 p.m. ET