Whitehorse confirmed as host of the 2026 Arctic Winter Games

It's official — Whitehorse will host the 2026 Arctic Winter Games, and planning for the big event can now begin.

The City of Whitehorse, the 2026 Arctic Winter Games (AWG) Host Society, and the games' international committee announced on Monday that they had signed a hosting agreement for the event two years from now.

The city said last year it would host those games, once the territorial government also agreed to offer some financial support. The hosting agreement formalizes the plan.

"This is a formality, but this is also like, 'let's go,' it's time to go," said Tracey Bilsky, host society president.

"Definitely this is our chance to use some of all that planning that we did and that momentum that we had for 2020, to be able to actually realize the games and have people come to our territory and participate. So yeah, we're excited."

Whitehorse had last been slated to host the AWGs in March 2020, but that event was canned at the last minute as global concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic were quickly growing.

Then the regular hosting schedule was again upended by world events, when Russia was removed as host of the 2026 AWGs in response to the war in Ukraine. That left the games' international committee scrambling for a replacement host for that year.

Bilsky acknowledges that's put a bit of a time squeeze on the planning in Whitehorse.

"We don't have as much time as hosts normally have to pull these games together, but we have tons of experience in our territory and I'm just, I'm really confident that we're going to be able to do this well," she said.

Bilsky said one of the main tasks now is to build partnerships to help fund the event. 

The territorial government agreed last summer to provide $4 million in cash to help