It began on December 26, 2011, and ended with the gold medal game played in Calgary on January 5, 2012.

[1] Sweden defeated defending-champion Russia 1–0 in overtime to win their first title in 31 years.

Denmark was relegated to Division I and Germany was promoted to the 2013 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.

On February 1, 2008, Hockey Canada and the Canadian Hockey League announced that six groups had submitted letters of intent to bid to host the 2012 tournament: Calgary/Edmonton; Halifax, Nova Scotia; London/Windsor, Ontario; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Toronto; and Winnipeg.

[4] The Alberta bid, supported by the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers as well as the Western Hockey League's Calgary Hitmen and Edmonton Oil Kings, was selected to host the tournament on August 28, 2008.

As part of their bid, the two cities projected that they would generate a tournament record attendance in excess of 475,000 fans and provide an economic benefit of $42 million to the province of Alberta.

[6] Following a reserved offering of 10- and 21-game ticket packs for Edmonton and Calgary games respectively to season ticket holders of the Oilers, Oil Kings, Flames and Hitmen, the tournament committee held a lottery to award the right to purchase the remaining seats.

[8] Calling the demand unprecedented, Hockey Canada announced that the 17,000 ticket packages made available to lottery winners had sold out in a matter of days, a year in advance of the tournament.

Though many more tickets were sold as part of tournament packages, the IIHF only counts actual paid spectators in attendance in its figures.

[20] Although originally scheduled to participate, North Korea withdrew from the tournament for unspecified reasons.