Complete Guide to Vancouver’s Official FIFA Watch Parties: Venues, Times and Transit Info for the First Match Day

Updated: 2026-06-17 | For real-time information, always defer to official announcements

The World Cup has finally kicked off in Vancouver. The first match at BC Place is Australia vs. Turkey at 9 p.m. (Pacific Time) on Saturday, June 13, a Group D fixture and this city’s opening match of the tournament. For fans who didn’t get tickets, the most important thing to know is this: FIFA has set up an official FIFA Fan Festival in Vancouver, running from June 11 all the way to July 19, with free admission and big-screen broadcasts of every match on site.

First, let me correct something a lot of people get wrong: Vancouver’s FIFA Fan Festival is not at the Vancouver Art Gallery Plaza downtown, but rather at the PNE grounds in the east end (Hastings Park, address 2901 E Hastings Street). This is an exhibition and amusement-park district well known to Vancouverites, with plenty of space; for the occasion, the organizers have built a brand-new Freedom Mobile open-air Amphitheatre on the grounds that holds about 10,000 people, with the whole Fan Festival planned to accommodate up to 25,000. Some early reports mistakenly placed the venue at the downtown plaza, so please defer to the announcements from FIFA and the Vancouver host organizers.

The Fan Festival is not open every day. Opening days and hours depend on the match schedule, with the grounds closed on certain dates (Mondays and Tuesdays); please refer to the official schedule (opening day hours are 10:00–22:00). General admission is free and requires no ticket; paid premium reserved seating is also available for purchase. Beyond watching the matches on the big screen, the grounds have lined up over a hundred hours of live music, performances by Canadian and international artists, food stalls with flavours from around the world, and a family zone for parents and kids. This is the most official and most lively viewing option outside of holding a match ticket, and I’d personally recommend bringing the whole family—the atmosphere is so much better than watching TV at home.

Transit is where it’s easiest to slip up this time, because getting to the Fan Festival and getting to BC Place to watch the game involve different routes, so don’t mix them up. To get to the Fan Festival at the PNE, you can take the SkyTrain Expo Line to 29th Avenue Station, or the Millennium Line to Renfrew Station, then transfer to the PNE shuttle service running along Renfrew Street. TransLink has announced that during the World Cup it will add SkyTrain, bus, SeaBus and West Coast Express service frequency and staff, and introduce two temporary bus routes, one of which is dedicated to shuttling passengers between the SkyTrain and the PNE Fan Festival.

Those heading into BC Place to watch the match live should take special note: on match days, take the train to Main Street–Science World Station rather than the normally closest Stadium–Chinatown Station. That’s because, under the official security plan, on match days the lower-level exit of Stadium–Chinatown Station on Expo Boulevard will be closed (that station’s Keefer Street and Beatty Street exits remain open every day). The area around the stadium will also have road closures on match days, including several segments of Expo Boulevard, Quebec Street, Beatty Street and Keefer Street. As a side note, the Australia vs. Turkey match is the first World Cup game played on BC Place’s newly laid natural grass—a temporary pitch installed on top of the original artificial turf and maintained with irrigation, ventilation and UV-light systems.

Below I’ve put the directions to both venues into a single table; check it before you head out and you won’t end up at the wrong station:

Even without a ticket, on match days the streets and public areas around BC Place usually fill up with fans decked out in their national team’s colours, naturally creating a lively outdoor viewing atmosphere. But to get into the big-screen area of the Fan Festival, the surest bet is still to head straight to the PNE. One reminder: make sure you stick to official FIFA and authorized venues, avoid wandering into unauthorized private broadcast events, and be sure to buy tickets only through FIFA’s official ticketing channels—don’t touch resale tickets of unknown origin.

On the broadcast side, Canada’s national team matches are expected to be carried in English by TSN (all matches) and CTV (select matches including Canada’s), with French coverage on the RDS (and RDS2) system; for the exact channels and streaming platforms, please refer to the official programming schedule, which we’ve also compiled in our complete guide to where to watch and which channels broadcast in Canada. If you’re planning to fly to Vancouver specifically for the games, hotel rooms are extremely hard to come by during the World Cup, so we’d advise booking accommodation early; for more local details, see our complete Vancouver World Cup viewing guide. Finally, on what to wear: in mid-June, Vancouver temperatures sit at roughly 15 to 22 degrees Celsius with a fairly high chance of rain, so dress in layers, bring a water-resistant jacket and rain gear, and add a comfortable pair of walking shoes—after all, it’s perfectly normal to be on your feet all day at the Fan Festival.