Toronto

Toronto is Canada's largest city, with a population of roughly 3 million in the city proper (6.4 million in the greater metropolitan area). It was one of the 16 host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosting matches at BMO Field through June and July. Toronto was one of twelve host cities that had still not published a Human Rights Action Plan by Human Rights Watch's 11 May Deadline, a failure FIFA contested on grounds that all sixteen cities had submitted plans privately. A City of Toronto staff report dated 20 May 2025 put the total cost of hosting at CAD $380 million, roughly USD $275-280 million at prevailing exchange rates. Of that, CAD $201.3 million (53%) is offset by provincial and federal funding contributions, leaving the city itself carrying CAD $178.6 million, or 47% of the total.

In March 2026, Amnesty International reported that Toronto had closed a city-run warming shelter to accommodate FIFA operational requirements, a decision that raised serious human rights concerns weeks before the tournament began. The shelter closure was cited in Amnesty's 'Humanity Must Win' report of 31 March, which upgraded overall tournament risk to medium-to-high. Toronto was notable as a Canadian host city precisely because of its contrast with the US host cities: the Vancouver Police chief explicitly confirmed that ICE was not deployed in Vancouver, while Toronto's approach to FIFA operations drew different scrutiny. In April 2026, the FFIRI (Iranian Football Federation) delegation was turned back at Toronto Pearson Airport on security grounds, underscoring the city's role as a flashpoint in the intersection of sport and geopolitics.

Toronto's FIFA preparations took place against a backdrop of Canada's broader approach to the tournament, which attracted relatively less controversy than its US co-hosts. Only 4 of 16 host cities across the tournament had published human rights plans at the time of the Amnesty report; Toronto had not published one. The CAD $380 million hosting bill, split between three levels of government, sits alongside that human rights record as a second axis on which Toronto's tournament will be judged: whether the roughly CAD $179 million the city itself spent produced returns proportionate to the cost. The city has prior experience hosting major international sporting events, including the 2015 Pan Am Games, and BMO Field, home of Toronto FC, was upgraded to accommodate World Cup capacity requirements.