Short track comes home: the ISU World Tour in Seoul

The stop, and where it sits in the season

The Seoul stop of the ISU Short Track World Tour runs at Mokdong Ice Rink in Yangcheon-gu, in the west of Seoul, from Friday 20 to Sunday 22 November 2026. On the ISU's own World Tour page it is the third of seven stops in the 2026/27 season: Vancouver on 23 to 25 October and Montreal on 30 October to 1 November come first, then Seoul, then Shanghai on 27 to 29 November and Beijing on 4 to 6 December, with Gdansk and Tilburg closing the tour in February 2027. The World Tour is the sport's top season-long circuit, launched in 2024/25 in place of the old World Cup. Seoul hosted a stop in December 2024 and sat out the 2025/26 season, so this is the tour's first visit in two years, early enough in the season that the overall standings are still taking shape.

How a World Tour weekend runs

Nine events are decided at every stop: the men's and women's 500m, 1000m and 1500m, the men's 5000m relay, the women's 3000m relay, and the mixed team relay. The weekend follows the tour's usual shape, qualifying heats first and the medal races across Saturday and Sunday, and the three individual distances reward three different kinds of skater. The 500m is a start and four and a half laps of nerve, over in about 40 seconds. The 1500m is the chess match, skaters feeling for position before the race breaks open late. The 1000m sits between the two. The relays are the loudest sessions in the building: exchanges are pushes, not baton passes, so a team can gain or lose a place in a single shove, and the mixed relay puts men's and women's legs into the same race. Short track also reviews its crashes: contact that looks accidental from the seats is re-examined on video, and penalties can move skaters up and down the result sheet after the racing stops. If you go to one session, make it a finals session with a relay in it.

The home story

Korea treats short track the way other countries treat football, and this stop has a farewell running through it. Choi Min-jeong, the most decorated Korean Olympian with seven career medals, has said this is her final season with the national team, and she is due to close her career back in this same rink at the World Championships in March 2027. Beside her, Kim Gil-li arrives as one of the form skaters of the new Olympic cycle, with two gold medals and a bronze from the Milan Cortina Winter Games earlier this year. The Korea Skating Union, which hosts the stop for the ISU, has promised fan programmes and K-pop events around the rink across the weekend, so expect the building to feel more like a homecoming than a routine tour stop. Home ice matters in this sport: in a compact rink the crowd noise is part of the racing, and Korean skaters have a long habit of saving their best weekends for it.

Going, and staying

Mokdong Ice Rink sits in the Mokdong sports complex in Yangcheon-gu, served by Omokgyo station on Line 5, and every seat in the rink is close to the ice. Tickets are the federation's to sell, so follow the official links from the event page rather than a reseller, and treat any price quoted elsewhere with care until the host federation publishes its own. Base yourself in the west of the city or anywhere along Line 5 and the trip in is simple: the hotels page covers where to stay in Seoul, with stays bookable through Trip.com. The rest of that weekend is busy too, and the events calendar carries the full late November list, domes and arenas included.

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