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Patrick Chan skates in the sen's short program during day 3 of the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2016 at TD Garden on March 30, 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts.Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Montreal has been selected to host the 2020 world figure skating championships.

Skate Canada made the announcement Thursday, saying the event will be held March 16-22, 2020, at the Bell Centre.

"Skate Canada has a proven track record of holding successful ISU events and we are looking forward to bringing the world's best skaters to Montreal in 2020," Skate Canada's CEO Debra Armstrong said in a release. "Montreal is a fantastic Canadian city with all the elements required to execute an excellent event and we know athletes and fans alike will enjoy all aspects of the championships."

Canada has hosted the world championships, an annual event that showcases 200 skaters from 50 countries, 10 times, most recently in 2013 in London, Ont. Montreal has hosted the event once before, in 1932.

This year's world championships were in Helsinki, Finland, where Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won the ice dance, and Kaetlyn Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman captured silver and bronze in women's singles.

The Italian city of Milan will host after the 2018 Olympics. Saitama, Japan, will host the 2019 world championships. Canada's other previous host cities were Vancouver (1960, 2001), Calgary (1972, 2006), Ottawa ('78, '84), Halifax ('90), and Edmonton ('96).

Canada also hosts the annual Skate Canada International, one of the stops on the ISU Grand Prix series.

Figure skater Patrick Chan says choosing Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah for his long program is a nod to Canadian Leonard Cohen. Chan, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue open their international seasons in October in Regina.

The Canadian Press

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