More than a half-century of waiting will come to an end Friday night, Feb 28, at Prospera Place as Kelowna welcomes back the Montana’s Brier for the first time since 1968.

The 2025 Montana’s Brier, presented by AGI, will kick off Friday with three-time defending champion Team Brad Gushue hitting the ice against its counterparts from St. John’s, N.L., Team Newfoundland and Labrador, skipped by Ty Dilello.

It’ll be one of four games in the opening draw, which is set for 6:30 p.m. (all times Pacific).

The other Draw 1 matchups have the host team from British Columbia, Team Cameron de Jong (Victoria) taking on Manitoba’s Team Reid Carruthers (Winnipeg); Alberta’s Team Kevin Koe (Calgary) is up against Manitoba’s Team Matt Dunstone (Winnipeg); and Northern Ontario’s Team John Epping (Sudbury) faces off with New Brunswick’s Team James Grattan (Oromocto).

It’s part of what should be a lively opening night of the 2025 Montana’s Brier, wrapped up by a free concert at the Original 16 Patch featuring Canadian rock legends 54•40.

The field in Kelowna comprises Gushue’s Team Canada squad, 14 provincial/territorial champions and three 2023-24 Canadian Team Ranking System (CTRS) qualifiers split into two pools of nine.

Team Gushue, which will be chasing a record fourth straight Montana’s Brier title, joined 2023-24 CTRS qualifiers Team Dunstone, Team Brad Jacobs of Calgary and 2024 Montana’s Brier runner-up Team Mike McEwen of Saskatchewan as pre-qualified entries.

Teams will play a complete eight-game round robin within their pools. From there, the top three teams in each pool advance to the playoffs.

There will be no tiebreakers; if teams are tied for a playoff spot, head-to-head results will be the first tiebreaker, and if that doesn’t resolve the tie, Last-Shot Draw rankings will rank the teams — the same formula used at World Championship events and the Winter Olympics.

The playoff format will see the first-place team from Pool A meeting second place from Pool B, and vice versa, in the first round of the playoffs at 12:30 p.m. on March 7, with the winners going directly to the Page playoff 1-2 game, while the losers meet the third-place finishers in the pools March 7 at 6:30 p.m. The winners of those games will advance to the Page playoff 3-4 game.

The standard Page playoffs commence with the winner of the Page 1v2 game on Saturday, March 8, at 6:30 p.m., advancing directly to the final, and the loser plays the winner of the Page 3v4 game (scheduled for 12:30 p.m. on March 8) in the semifinal. 

The semifinal (Sunday, March 9, at 11 a.m.) winner takes on the winner of the Page 1v2 game in the gold-medal game at 5 p.m. on Sunday.