Scotties Tournament of Hearts Le Tournoi des Cœurs Scotties | |
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Established | 1961 |
2025 host city | Thunder Bay, Ontario |
2025 arena | Fort William Gardens |
2024 champion | Ontario (Rachel Homan) |
Current edition | |
The Scotties Tournament of Hearts (French: Le Tournoi des Cœurs Scotties; commonly referred to as the Scotties) is the annual Canadian women's curling championship, sanctioned by Curling Canada, formerly called the Canadian Curling Association. The winner goes on to represent Canada at the women's world curling championships. Since 1985, the winner also gets to return to the following year's tournament as "Team Canada". It is formally known as the "Canadian Women's Curling Championship".
Since 1982, the tournament has been sponsored by Kruger Products, which was formerly known as Scott Paper Limited when it was a Canadian subsidiary of Scott Paper Company. As such, the tournament was formerly known as the Scott Tournament of Hearts; when Kimberly-Clark merged with Scott, the Canadian arm was sold to the Quebec-based Kruger Inc. – while Kruger was granted a license to use several Scott brands in Canada until June 2007, it was given a long-term license to the Scotties brand because Kimberly-Clark already owned Kleenex. As such, the tournament was officially renamed the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in 2007.
Until 2018, the format was a round robin of 12 teams. Starting with the 2015 Scotties Tournament of Hearts there have been more than twelve eligible teams; therefore a pre-qualification tournament was held to trim the field to twelve. In 2021, a new 18-team format was introduced, in which all 14 member associations of Curling Canada field a team in a main draw of two pools, alongside the defending champions, and the three highest-ranked teams on the Canadian Team Ranking System standings that did not win their provincial championships. The teams are separated into two pools of nine, each playing a round-robin within their pool, with the top three teams in each pool advancing to a second round to determine the final four teams.
At the end of the second round, playoffs occur to determine the championship winner. The system used is known as the Page playoff system.