8 September 2025

World Curling Members vote for constitutional changes at the Annual General Assembly

The 14th World Curling Congress concluded on the Gold Coast with the Annual General Assembly. Member Associations voted on a series of constitutional amendments including upgrading the level of several Member Associations, altering the structure of the Board elections, and changing the status of several Commissions and Working Groups.

Constitutional Changes

The Members voted to alter language clarifying World Curling’s rights as the governing body for all forms of the sport, including but not limited to the disciplines of curling, para curling, e-sports curling and floor curling.

The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group and Sustainability Working Group were formally changed to full Standing Commissions. The three Zonal Commissions were removed from the Constitution as they had previously been replaced by Member Working Groups that meet in line with the member size and stage in their development, rather than region.

Motions clarifying situations involving the election of new Directors were also passed. The first of these formalises an emergency rule that was implemented at the 2024 Annual General Assembly to clarify the circumstances where candidates received a tied number of votes during the election.

The second motion removed the official election of Vice-Presidents. Now candidates will be voted to the Board as Directors, then the Board themselves would select the two Vice-Presidents from those elected. This removes the complication whereby an incumbent Director would run for the Vice-President position and potentially trigger a by-election.

A motion to strengthen the role of the Nominations Committee was approved. This motion included changes to give the committee the authority to make a stronger set of recommendations regarding the best candidates for vacant Board positions and to allow the committee to re-open or extend the nomination period prior to the Annual General Assembly.

During the Assembly, the Members ratified the appointment of the two new Independent Directors, Andrew Ryan MBE and Zhang Hong in line with Bye-Law 3 6.3 of the Constitution.

Member Association Updates

The Iran Curling Association and the Monegasque Skating Federation were upgraded to Provisional Members, from their initial Conditional status.

The 15th World Curling Congress

At the conclusion of the Annual General Assembly, it was announced that the 15th edition of the World Curling Congress would take place in Bratislava, Slovakia from 3–6 September 2026.

This edition of the Annual General Assembly will include the Presidential election and the election of three Director positions on the World Curling Board.

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