The University of Minnesota Duluth men's hockey program was one of four teams announced Tuesday that will play in the Friendship Four in November of 2026 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Founded by The Odyssey Trust and held annually at The SSE Arena, Belfast, the Friendship Four will feature UMD, the University of Connecticut, Providence College, and Colgate University, and is the first and only National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I ice hockey tournament to take place outside of North America. Since its inception in 2015, the tournament has become a flagship event in Northern Ireland's sporting calendar, bringing world-class collegiate hockey to Belfast while promoting education, cultural exchange, and community engagement.

The Bulldogs will become just the second National College Hockey Conference team to have been invited to Belfast – Miami University (Ohio) will become the first in November of 2025.

The high-profile tournament is designed to promote education, social welfare, and community interaction, building on the Sister Cities agreement between Belfast and Boston, signed a decade ago. The agreement aims to foster stronger economic development, trade and investment, tourism, youth, cultural exchanges, and educational linkages between the two cities, as well as to increase awareness of Belfast and Boston being growth cities in the connected health and life sciences, creative industries, tourism, financial services, and knowledge economy sectors.

The Bulldog men's and women's hockey teams are the first programs from the same school to be invited to play in Belfast. This season, the UMD women's hockey team will play in the Friendship Series in Belfast on Jan. 2-3, 2026, the first Western Collegiate Hockey Association team to play in the tournament.


ALL-TIME FRIENDSHIP FOUR MEN'S PARTICIPANTS
2015 – UMass-Lowell*, Brown, Northeastern, Colgate
2016 – Vermont*, Quinnipiac, UMass, St. Lawrence
2017 – Clarkson*, Providence, Maine, RPI
2018 – Union*, Boston University, Yale, UConn
2019 – Northeastern*, Colgate, New Hampshire, Princeton
2022 – Quinnipiac*, UMass-Amherst, UMass-Lowell, Dartmouth
2024 – Boston University*, Harvard, Merrimack, Notre Dame
2025 – Miami, RIT, Sacred Heart, Union
2026 – Colgate, UMD, Providence, UConn
2027 – North Dakota, Northeastern, Quinnipiac, Wisconsin
2028 – Dartmouth, Maine, Notre Dame, Omaha
 
* - Previous Belpot Champion