Canada’s Einarson into First World Curling Final

With files from Curling Canada

Bronze no more.

Fourth place no more.

Team Kerri Einarson is off to the 2026 world women’s curling championship gold medal final, following a dismantling of Japan in the semifinal at Calgary’s WinSport Event Centre. 

The final score was 11-3.

Einarson will face Switzerland’s Xenia Schwaller in the final (3:00 p.m. MT, TSN)  after the Swiss defeated Sweden 8-5 in the other semi.

Japan (Satsuki Fujisawa) and Sweden (Isabella Wranaa) will tussle for bronze earlier on Sunday (9:00 a.m. MT).

Einarson, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard, Krysten Karwacki and coach Reid Carruthers are well acquainted with that bronze medal game.

Along with lead Karlee Burgess, they are ready for something different – a first in the team’s career, in fact.

“It’s a dream come true,” Einarson said. “It’s something that we’ve worked extremely hard for over the years, and we’ve had some disappointing games (in) previous years and now to finally get ourselves into that gold-medal game is a pretty special feeling.”

For the third year in a row, Canada faces Switzerland in the gold-medal game, this time with different teams. The past two years featured Canada’s Team Rachel Homan against Switzerland’s Team Silvana Tirinzoni, with Canada winning both in 2024 and ‘25.

The semifinal bore little resemblance to the tight round-robin meeting between the two sides. Canada controlled it from the start, opening with a big three-ender when Einarson executed a hit on a line of Canadian stones to eject a Japanese rock from the house.

“It’s huge, it’s just phenomenal for this team,” Birchard said of the win. 

“We’ve had so many cracks at the world championships and just haven’t been able to get past the semifinal, and we came out firing today that first end, and we just never looked back after that… and it’s just amazing to be playing for gold.”

In the fall of 2023, a second straight semifinal loss at the Pan Continental Championship opened the floodgates of Einarson’s frustration.

“It’s getting old,” Einarson told The Curling News. 

Her team had also won bronze at the 2022 and ’23 world championships. 

“I love playing for a medal, but it’s tough when you just can’t get over the hurdle.”

Japan and Sweden reached the semis via qualification wins on Saturday morning. 

Japan defeated Türkiye’s Dilsat Yildiz 7-5, and Sweden defeated South Korea’s Gim Eun-ji by a 9-5 count.