vancouverfwc26.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3fdf10c7b41fb3e7510686bb951cc32c.jpeg\"\/)
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Construction at the 10,000-seat amphitheatre at Hastings Park which is scheduled to host the Fan Festival during the FIFA World Cup in June in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
\u201cHosting the World Cup is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for British Columbia,\u201d said Anne Kang, the Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport for the province. \u201cBy offering free access to the amphitheatre, the FIFA Fan Festival Vancouver will create a welcoming place for people from B.C. and around the world to come together and share in the excitement of the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coastal Jazz executive director Nina Horvath says this year\u2019s 41st Annual Vancouver International Jazz Festival is being affected by the World Cup plans. The downtown music festival is set to take place June 26-July 5 and has gone through a lot of back-and-forth negotiation to be able to stage its free weekend events around the Vancouver Art Gallery.<\/p>\n
Noting that staff at all levels have been excellent in reaching final agreements, the process has been challenging and time-consuming for arts organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a whole, destination events such as this are probably a positive, and I retain hope there is still a benefit for us to have a free musical event in the centre of downtown where a majority of hotels are and where FIFA is taking place,\u201d she said of the planned World Cup events. \u201cBut if (the city is) going to continue bidding for these events, it would be good to be more cognizant of engaging local partners in the process early on and, possibly, budgeting for the fact that there needs to be some mitigation for the impacts. As an example, we are hosed for hotel space for artists this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Performers entertain the crowd at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in 2024.<\/p>\n
Horvath says bidding for some artist appearances has overlapped, with the jazz festival losing out due to higher offers.<\/p>\n
The Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival, a part of the Vancouver arts and culture economy since the sport\u2019s introduction to the region during Expo \u201986, was one of the first to raise concerns about its event\u2019s dates overlapping with the World Cup. Owing to the global scheduling of dragon boat competitions, the Vancouver event\u2019s dates are not flexible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe operate on a two-year planning cycle due to the fleet of other events we run provincially, which have unique requirements for their land and water interface,\u201d said Dragon Boat B.C. spokesperson Dominic Lai. \u201cAs there is only one dock that has that capacity with enough space to stage everything, and 100 per cent of that fell in FIFA\u2019s \u2018last mile\u2019 zone, we cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lai noted it\u2019s great to see the city host global events, but stressed the importance of maintaining a balance between the large-scale attractions and those that regularly appear on Vancouver\u2019s annual events calendar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to balance what\u2019s happening globally with what\u2019s happening locally,\u201d he said. \u201cMaking sure that, after these global events come and go, you still have a strong local base is important. It\u2019s only with local events that you can grow your local events and industries and support systems to be able to host these major global events.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jessie Adcock, host committee lead and chief delivery officer for World Cup Vancouver, says logistics around planning the event have indeed been challenging.<\/p>\n
But she notes that almost all of the arts and cultural events that coincided with the World Cup in Vancouver are still going ahead. She expressed the hope is that the influx of people in town to see matches will spin-off into checking out other arts and cultural events as well.<\/p>\n
A Community Activation Playbook has been released for restaurants, community organizers and people who want to host an event or watch party during the World Cup, offering a guide on how to do so without running into trouble with World Cup planning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been working to avoid too much happening on match days, which are going to be extremely busy, so that working around road closures, public safety and security efforts and so forth is easier,\u201d Adcock says.<\/p>\n
As for why a soccer game requires more planning than, say, multiple nights of Taylor Swift\u2019s The Eras Tour or a possible playoff run by the Vancouver Canucks, Adcock explained the differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a regular match or concert, we go into the stadium, watch and go home,\u201d she said. \u201cA World Cup match is on a different level. The stadium will have a surround barrier around it, with activations all around the site, so people with a match ticket can come in a few hours earlier and then stick around afterwards. It becomes an all-day-long event.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adcock anticipates that businesses around the activation zone will want to get in on the action.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re anticipating that locals will want to get involved and downtown will be full, so we are working with industry to deploy a theme throughout the city bringing it all together,\u201d she said. \u201cThat way, everyone can come together and participate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overall, arts groups noted the benefits of the multi-year lead time of the consultation process with the City Host Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics\u2019 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad as a far better model for such major events versus the far shorter planning behind the World Cup Vancouver celebrations.<\/p>\n
sderdeyn@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\nRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Organizers of annual Vancouver arts and cultural summer festivals say the World Cup is impacting their events in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[221592,49,48,221590,3274,55,452,221591,221589,221593,13009],"class_list":{"0":"post-578007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-arts-organizations","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cultural-events","12":"tag-fifa","13":"tag-vancouver","14":"tag-vancouver-canucks","15":"tag-vancouver-folk-music-festival","16":"tag-vancouver-international-jazz-festival","17":"tag-vancouver-pride","18":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}