Vancouver announced as newest PWHL franchise for 2025-26 season

The Professional Women's Hockey League will expand to Vancouver and begin play next season, the league announced on Wednesday.

The decision to expand to Vancouver had been rumoured for weeks, and was finally confirmed at a press conference in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday morning. The official announcement was made by a local under-11 girls' hockey team. The girls crowded around a podium, waving signs to show how badly they wanted Vancouver to get a PWHL team, before announcing the news.

Vancouver was chosen as the seventh PWHL franchise after an eight-month process that saw expansion bids from groups in more than 20 cities.

And it may not be the only team joining the league for next season. The PWHL is in negotiations to potentially add a second expansion team, which would bring the number of teams to eight.

Amy Scheer, the league's executive vice president of business operations, said Vancouver is step one in a multi-year plan to continue to grow the league.

"There are multiple other cities in contention that we're still working through, so we're hopeful that we will have an announcement in the future about a second expansion team for next year," Scheer told CBC Sports in an interview.

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The Vancouver team will play out of Pacific Coliseum, an arena on the site of the Pacific National Exhibition grounds. It can seat more than 16,000 fans and the PWHL team will be the anchor tenant.

When evaluating the expansion bids, a group within the league looked at several criteria, ranging from geography and economic opportunity to youth hockey and infrastructure.

Vancouver checked