Ticket demand seems to have outrun the federation’s own planning. On July 17, 2026, the German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB) said the first batch of 38,000 tickets for the opening game between Germany and Switzerland had sold out, apparently within just a few hours. Ten months before the tournament even starts, with no rosters set and no real read yet on either team’s form.
Tickets at €39 gone in a couple of hours
DEB confirmed the opening game lineup, hosts against Switzerland, on July 15. Sales opened the next day, July 16, and prices started at €39 a seat. Rather than release the batch in stages, DEB, apparently, put the whole thing on sale at once, and by the following day, per the official announcement, all 38,000 seats were gone. The game itself is set for May 13, 2027, at 8:20 p.m. local time, organizers say. It’s at the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, a venue they list at something like 61,574 seats.
A standalone game, not a regular group-stage match
Formally, Germany vs. Switzerland sits outside the main draw schedule. Organizers carved it out as a special opening game, a day before the tournament’s official start. The rest of the national teams, presumably, take the ice later. Switzerland arrives as the reigning runners-up, for what it’s worth, having reached the final last time out. That puts Germany up against one of the tournament favorites, arguably, right out of the gate in its own home event. Fine by the organizers, it seems. The main arena is already full on night one, and the main draw hasn’t even begun.
Tickets, merch, and hotels around the arena
A sharp surge in ticket demand typically drives the entire market surrounding the tournament, from resold seats and official merchandise to hotels in Gelsenkirchen being fully booked for the match date. Accommodation for these May dates in the city is usually reserved several months before the game. Part of this audience also overlaps with online slot players. Hockey-related content is attracting growing interest among the online slots audience at https://spinlander22.com/, and the number of hockey fans among Spinlander Casino players has been increasing over the past few seasons.
Gelsenkirchen has hosted an opening game like this before
The Veltins-Arena, it turns out, isn’t new to the role. It hosted a World Championship opening game back in 2010. Germany beat the United States 2-1 in overtime that night, with Felix Schütz settling it just 21 seconds in. Seventeen years on, Gelsenkirchen is back to opening a home tournament, and for DEB it’s arguably a venue with a track record already proven. Düsseldorf and Mannheim round out the host cities for 2027. That puts the tournament across three German arenas in total. Anyone planning to catch more than one match should probably factor in that the games are spread across different cities.
What comes next
That first batch covered about 62% of the arena’s seats; the rest goes on sale later. The second sales phase, covering day passes (session tickets for several matches at the arena in one day), is set for September 2026. Individual tickets for the remaining main draw matches are expected in February 2027, so anyone who missed the first sales phase is looking at a wait of a bit over six months.
Given how fast the first batch went, demand isn’t likely to cool off before then. Tickets for Germany’s own main draw games haven’t gone on sale yet either. That’s still to come before the championship starts, and DEB will probably keep this rush in mind when it sets up the September sales phase. Fans from Austria and elsewhere nearby planning a May trip to Gelsenkirchen should mark the dates for both sales phases now, rather than waiting until February.
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