Rashid Mohiddin had not even made it inside Toronto’s official 2026 World Cup launch event in March before the city’s preparation problems were on display.
The 100 Days to Go event was held at Rebel, a nightclub perched on a lakeside pier that could only be reached by a single access road.
“The traffic snarl to just park the Uber was so insane that we hopped out and walked,” he said.
The choice of food was another red flag.
“The food was entirely catered by [Oliver & Bonacini Catering],” said Mohiddin. “It wasn’t like someone’s grandma making ćevapi — it wasn’t authentic. It felt like a corporate version of something cultural.”
For Mohiddin, these little decisions raise broader concerns about Toronto’s readiness to host its first-ever World Cup. He and others wonder whether the city has adequately thought through crowd management, marketing and public services.
“I think the location itself demonstrates how we are approaching this festival,” said Mohiddin, a community organizer and lifelong soccer fan who attended the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa.
“What if you’d done this in the Entertainment District? Wouldn’t that have generated more excitement from a regular Torontonian commuting to and from work that day?
“Isn’t that a better way to promote this global festival than shunting it off in the middle of nowhere in an inaccessible location?”
A first for Canada
In the World Cup’s nearly 100-year history, Canada has never previously hosted the tournament. This year, Toronto and Vancouver will join cities across the U.S. and Mexico in hosting 104 matches, running from June 12 to July 2.
Toronto is anticipating at least 300,000 visitors over the course of the tournament, while Vancouver is expecting 350,000.
Mohiddin thinks Toronto’s 300,000-visitor estimate underestimates demand. He suspects this number is based on attendance to the Pan Am Games, which Toronto hosted in 2015.
But the Pan Am Games are not comparable to the World Cup, he says.
“The Olympics and the World Cup are the only events in the world that are referred to as sporting mega events,” said Mohiddin.
“The Pan American Athletic championships … are like a high school tournament compared to the World Cup.”
Brazil, which hosted the 2024 World Cup, saw four million foreign and domestic visitors attend the matches — about 300,000 more than projected.
A City of Toronto spokesperson said its estimate was developed in the initial bid process and reflects early projections. It referred questions about visitor projections to the tourist agency Destination Toronto. A Destination Toronto spokesperson did not directly address the question about how many visitors Toronto is preparing to welcome.
Tyeshia Redden, a geography and planning professor at the University of Toronto, notes that geopolitical factors could further boost visitor numbers beyond initial projections.
“[Because of] the increasing hostility of the United States to foreigners and tourists, many World Cup attendees changed their plans to visit Canada instead,” she told Canadian Affairs in an email.
In April, the Financial Times reported that U.S. hotels are having to slash room rates because anti-American sentiment and other factors are altering fans’ travel plans.
Marketing and engagement
Sources said Toronto has also been doing a poor job of marketing the tournament.
“Toronto certainly doesn’t ‘feel’ like a city that is about to host an international sporting tournament in a few weeks,” said Redden.
The World Cup is not prominently featured on the city’s main website or events page. It is not even featured on Destination Toronto’s main events pages.
By contrast, the comparable agency Destination Vancouver features World Cup information prominently on its main page, including ticketing, match details and travel planning.
Bruce Kidd, a former Olympian and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, said he would have liked to see Toronto do more to build enthusiasm for soccer ahead of the tournament.
“What is disappointing to me is that there wasn’t … a major effort to use this event to promote the sport to those communities and age groups that don’t participate,” he said.
Kidd says the World Cup in Toronto could come and go “without leaving a legacy.”
Redden adds that poor communication and lack of community engagement could also undermine the experience for fans.
Neighbourhood representatives are “glaringly absent” from FIFA’s Toronto Mobility Plan, she says. This plan sets out how the city intends to manage crowd movement, traffic and transit demand during the tournament.
“Deficient or ineffective consultation, education, and marketing can risk residents feeling as though the event has been imposed on them.”
System strains
Sources also say the tournament may strain Toronto’s already stretched public services.
“Our overwhelmed public health care system is suddenly going to have to deal with drunk tourists who are also going to get into all manner of drug mishap,” said Mohiddin.
A recent article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns the World Cup could overwhelm a health system that is at capacity.
Even short-term surges in demand can strain emergency services, compromising patient care and increasing the risk of medical errors, writes Dr. Catherine Varner, an emergency physician at Sinai Health in Toronto and a deputy editor of the journal.
Redden also points to pressure on transit, describing a system “plagued by aging infrastructure and inefficient modalities,” and raising concerns about accessibility for people with disabilities.
Mohiddin agrees.
“Toronto’s roads and Toronto’s public transit system — the two things we’re counting on as our way of navigating the hundreds of thousands of tourists — cannot even handle the current demands of Toronto right now,” he said.
A city spokesperson said Toronto is prioritizing a “transit-first approach,” where people are encouraged to use public transit rather than drive.
The city is also planning to monitor conditions in “real time,” the spokesperson said, and will implement daily measures to support safe crowd control.
“[W]e have a strong track record of delivering major global events at scale like the Pan Am Games, Collision Conference, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and most recently the 2025 World Series,” said Kelly Jackson, vice-president of destination development at Destination Toronto, in an email to Canadian Affairs.
Kidd agrees, noting Toronto has significant experience with big events. This leaves him feeling cautiously optimistic.
“In all of these mega events, everybody is gloom and doom before they happen … and then they come about and they go off without a hitch,” he said.
“That’s certainly been the Canadian experience … Montreal was one of the best Olympics in the modern post-World War II period. There was an atmosphere of … welcoming, joyous intercultural exchange.”
For his part, Mohiddin is excited, but wary.
“Don’t get me wrong, this event is awesome. I have this incredible sense of giddiness … Toronto’s identity is perfect for it, because the World Cup is a bunch of people from all over the world coming together around the excuse of football,” he said.
“But this could either be the best party in the city, or the worst.”
