Gary Bettman confirms NY Islanders will get an event, but no All Star Game in 2026

If you were hoping to see the NHL All-Star Weekend at UBS Arena in 2026, you'll have to wait - and we're not sure how long. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman confirmed Tuesday via Newsday’s Andrew Gross that the league is going in a different direction.

The change of plans was rumored last month, as Bettman said that the league was "re-evaluating" the format after the 4 Nations Face-off "raised the bar" for what All-Star Weekend should be for the league in the years to come. The original plan was to hold the All-Star festivities at UBS in February, right before NHL players head to Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Now? The NHL will host a “kickoff” event at UBS Arena before the Olympics — but don’t expect a game.

Isles legends Denis Potvin and Bryan Trottier jointly announced that the Islanders would host the 2026 All-Star Game at last season's Stadium Series game at MetLife Stadium.

"We'll have an event at UBS before we go to the Olympics, but then we'll do something more focused on a major hockey event for the following year," Bettman said. "We have a little bit of time to finalize what we're doing." So what exactly is this event? We don't know, but the Islanders are on board, or at least publicly saying so, releasing a statement saying, “We look forward to working with the league on any event that will showcase our world-class facility, UBS Arena.”

One possibility is that the NHL now seems to be leaning toward major international tournaments in even years (Olympics in 2026 and 2030, World Cup in 2028), and saving the All-Star Game for the odd years (2027, 2029, 2031). Sure, UBS Arena will host an event, but at some point, the organization needs to get the game, the skills competition, and everything traditional that an NHL All-Star Weekend has to offer.

The team presumably had dangled the All-Star Game as a reason to entice season ticket holders to renew their tickets for next season and it would have been a dangled carrot throughout the year to have fans committ to packages. Now they'll have to rethink that marketing strategy and pivot to something that's unknown for now, and will be for a few more months.