World Cup kick-off brings surge of international visitors to Toronto despite ticket woes

Toronto’s first-ever FIFA World Cup match—the Group B opener between co-hosts Canada and Bosnia-and-Herzegovina—has turned the city into an impromptu crossroads of global mobility. Although many marquee teams are playing south of the border, hundreds of visiting supporters are still touching down at Pearson International, lured by comparatively cheap trans-Atlantic flights and Canada’s lower drinking age. Immigration officials report a 17 % spike in the arrival of travellers using the Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) system during the tournament’s opening week, with U.K., German and Scottish passport holders leading the pack.



For fans and business travelers who still need to secure last-minute visas or confirm their eTA eligibility, VisaHQ can streamline the paperwork in minutes. The company’s online portal (https://www.visahq.com/canada/) provides step-by-step guidance for more than 200 nationalities, ensuring supporters spend less time on forms and more time planning their match-day celebrations.

City authorities scrambled when heavy rain forced the cancellation of Thursday’s outdoor Fan Fest, dispersing crowds into bars and public viewing zones across downtown. Hoteliers say occupancy is running at 92 %, and the local tourism bureau expects the World Cup to inject at least C$300 million into the Greater Toronto Area economy during June alone—welcome news for a sector still recovering from pandemic-era travel restrictions. Yet the influx also exposes bottlenecks. Transport Canada warns that same-day VIA Rail services from Ottawa and Montreal are already sold out on key matchdays, while the TTC has had to add 40 % more subway capacity on Line 1 to cope with stadium traffic. Mobility managers advising inbound corporate groups are urging travellers to book rail or coach tickets well in advance and to factor in downtown road closures around Exhibition Place. On the immigration front, the Canada Border Services Agency has rolled out express processing lanes for accredited media and FIFA officials at Pearson and Billy Bishop Airports. Temporary foreign workers employed by event caterers are being fast-tracked under the Global Skills Stream, illustrating how mega-events can accelerate short-term labour mobility as well as tourism flows. For businesses, the lesson is clear: even “secondary” host cities can see significant surges in demand for accommodation, ground transport and casual labour. Travel buyers should monitor dynamic hotel pricing, while assignees based in Toronto may need flexible work-from-home arrangements on high-traffic days to avoid gridlocked commutes.