Moscow to host the All-Star Week

On July 11 the KHL confirmed that the 2020 All-Star Week will be staged in Moscow. The league’s showcase event, which highlights the best players of the Women’s Hockey League, Junior Hockey League and KHL, will take place at Dynamo Moscow’s VTB Arena. The action runs from Jan. 11-19.

Getting things underway on Jan. 11, 2020, the Women’s All-Star Game starts us off. The next day, it’s the turns of the youngsters in the Youth Hockey League’s Challenge Cup. Finally, the main event: Jan. 18 brings the KHL Skill Show before Jan. 19 wraps things up with the KHL All-Star Game.

Moscow was selected as the host city following the work of a special KHL Commission, which assessed the candidate cities on 32 criteria – from infrastructure to backing from local authorities and sponsors.

The KHL looked at several candidates, including St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Yaroslavl, Novosibirsk, Magnitogorsk and Vladivostok. Moscow proved to be the best fit – from the host venue (the VTB Arena is the newest in the city) to the full support of the City government.

Georgy Kobylyansky, KHL Vice President of Hockey Operations:

Our choice of Moscow came after a long process of assessing several candidates, which included some of the most important hockey centers in Russia and Europe. I’d like to remind everyone that this isn’t just about the KHL All-Stars, it’s a full week-long celebration that encompasses three leagues and this is something that has to be taken into account when setting up the event. In the future, the KHL is eager to take the All-Star Week to new locations. Soon we will see new arenas opening in Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Omsk and Nizhny Novgorod, and we will, of course, look closely for opportunities to take our showcase event to these cities. For now, though, we’ve chosen to return to Moscow, where the proposals for 2020 most closely match our criteria and where, most importantly, we can see significant interest and support on behalf of the local authorities.