The FIFA Fan Festival at Fort York and The Bentway closed on July 19, the same day Spain beat Argentina in the final. Over 23 event days, more than 350,000 people came through the gates, according to the City of Toronto’s own tournament recap. On closing day, 263,972 fans watched the final across the festival locations still open that Sunday.
Toronto Stadium told its own story. Over six matches, roughly 250,000 fans passed through the gates, in a building that added nearly 18,000 temporary seats just for the tournament.
The festival was never just about the games on the screen. Eighty six performers took the stage over the run, most of them Canadian, most of those local. Tkaronto Market brought five spaces of Indigenous vendors into the heart of the site, next to a custom mini pitch designed around the work of Indigenous artist Alanah Jewel. At night, United in Light turned the Bentway Skate Trail into four glowing LED flags representing the nations in the tournament.
Fort York and The Bentway are set to reopen to the public August 1, with crews restoring the grounds over the following weeks. HWTC grads were behind counters, on floors, and at gates through all of it. The version of Toronto that hundreds of thousands of visitors are taking home with them was built in large part by hospitality workers doing their jobs well under a lot of pressure, and that part of the story doesn’t show up in an attendance count.
Were you there, or did you work it? Send us your photos. We want to build a gallery of what this month actually looked like, from the fans in the stands to the staff who kept things running.
For the full numbers on the tournament’s impact, the City of Toronto posted its own recap: City of Toronto: Updates on the Impact of the FIFA World Cup 2026
