From the start of the 2022-2023 season, the Pan-Continental Curling Championships will replace the Pacific-Asia Curling Championships and the Americas Challenge.

Teams from both the Americas and Pacific-Asia zones will feature in the new event in a two-division model.

The men’s and women’s A divisions are set to feature eight teams, with the first edition posed to include five nations from the Pacific-Asia zone and three from the Americas.

The A divisions will be contested through a single round-robin group, with the top four teams after this phase competing in playoffs, which feature semi-finals and gold-and bronze-medal matches.

Five teams will qualify to the World Championships from the event, which has been created to help developing countries in the Americas and Asia and the Pacific improve their play and enhance their world ranking.

In other business, the exclusion of the Polish Curling Association as a member of the WCF was confirmed following an overwhelming majority voting in favour of the proposal.

The exclusion follows on from a suspension issued against the national body in February 2020 for bringing the sport into disrepute.

Two positions on the WCF Board were elected also, with Graham Prouse of Canada re-elected to the post of vice-president of the Americas after standing unopposed.

Hew Chalmers of Scotland was eligible to be re-elected as director, but decided not to stand, with Robin Niven, also of Scotland, securing the post following four rounds of voting.

A vote was passed today to restructure the WCF Board, which must now feature a President, two vice-presidents, five directors elected by members and two independent directors selected by the Board.

There was a further vote to improve gender balance, with World Curling members with four representatives now required to name two men and two women to the positions, compared to at least one woman and one man previously.

Finally, it was agreed to trial proposed rule changes at next year’s men's, women's and junior World Championships.

The exact wording of the proposed rule changes is yet to be finalised, but these are designed to address feedback in relation to the pace of play, the length of the game, the predictability of the game and blank ends.

Next year’s World Curling General Assembly is scheduled to be held in Lausanne in Switzerland in September 2022.

Saint Petersburg in Russia had been due to stage the 2020 and 2021 editions, but on both occasions the gathering was taken online because of the coronavirus pandemic.