"A second COVID": How unclear FIFA restrictions are hurting Vancouver’s annual events

When Dominic Lai stepped out of a rideshare in front of Chinatown Plaza he was on the phone. The patio of the boutique coffee shop Annabelle’s was packed, and I’d narrowly been able to grab a table for us to meet. 

When Lai joined me, he said that was one of many media interviews he’d already done that day, with more coming up. News had broken the night before that his organization was cancelling their premier event, the Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival in False Creek, for 2026. 

The reason? The FIFA World Cup. Vancouver is set to host seven matches at B.C. Place Stadium between June 13 and July 7, 2026.

Dragon Boat BC – where Lai is the operations and marketing director, among other titles – runs races and events all over the Lower Mainland and around the province. The False Creek race is the organization’s biggest event, drawing over 130,000 people for the paddling competition and free festival near Science World. It also accounts for 35-40 per cent of the Dragon Boat BC’s yearly operations and revenue budget. 

But for 2026, what would have been the 39th edition of the event, the city told Lai and Dragon Boat BC that it would not grant them permits due to restrictions imposed by FIFA. 

“This represents a second COVID for us in terms of impact,” Lai said.

FIFA’s host city agreement with the city and province, obtained through FOI by theBreaker, has an event restriction clause that prohibits “substantial cultural events (such as music concerts) which draw together large numbers of people,” in Vancouver.  

In a statement, the city’s FIFA host committee told Vancity Lookout they are “working with event organizers of sporting and cultural events taking place between June 4 and July 14, 2026, to ensure that events don’t conflict geographically, and that there are sufficient City resources to support a safe environment for all to enjoy.” 

“Most annual events are expected to proceed, though some may require adjustments in timing, location, or scale,” the host committee added, but referred questions about the cancelled 2026 Dragon Boat Festival to the province. 

“The Province is aware that this event is impacted by the World Cup and understands that major events can create challenges for communities,” the province said in a statement, adding that they’ve supported the festival with close to $1.8 million in funding since 2018. 

Communication frustrations 

The lack of clarity is causing headaches for other local event organizers, who say the city’s host committee has not provided clarity about what may or may not be allowed. 

The host city agreement requires the city to establish an undefined zone, to be decided by FIFA, around B.C. Place where no events, activities, branding, or advertising — aside from FIFA partners — are permitted for at least 16 days during the tournament. The city’s host committee told Vancity Lookout the zone extends two kilometres around BC Place and 100 metres around the FIFA Fan Festival near the PNE. 

Nickolas Collinet, the founder and executive director of Public Disco Society, is one of those event organizers who is struggling with the lack of communication and information around FIFA restrictions.

“We need to know, what does the brand protection zone limit? Like what are the actual definitions of what you can and can't do,” in that zone and in the city at large, Collinet explained to Vancity Lookout. 

Collinet said that when he asked the city these questions, staff have told him they don’t have all the answers yet, despite the city’s goal of providing the information a year before the event in question. “I think the city is in over their heads dealing with FIFA being the one that is really the decider,” Collinet said.

“They need to tell us that now, not in four or five months,” Collinet said, adding that Public Disco is now in a situation where they’ll probably need to cancel any events during June and early July next year. 

In response to Vancity Lookout’s questions about timelines for communications with event producers, the city’s host committee said that “community activation guidelines will be released in the coming month,” adding that they’ve been “engaging with major businesses near the stadium and are expanding outreach to local businesses, stakeholders and residents.

“Planning for an event of this scale involves coordination with multiple partners, including FIFA, and many operational details are received in real time,” the host committee said. 

Public Disco hosts both free and ticketed block parties around Vancouver during the summer, featuring local and international DJs and dance performers. This year, they’ve hosted events downtown, in Mount Pleasant and Gastown, and on Granville Island.

“I think at the end of the day, [the city and FIFA are] going to want vibrancy and they're going to want events. [But] nothing can be sponsored. How do you throw an event if you don't have a sponsor [and] the city is not going to fund it?” Collinet said, pointing out Public Disco receives $5,000 per year in funding from the city and mostly funds itself from sponsors, drink sales, and its ticketed events. 

“We want to be a part of the celebrations and put our city on the map for what happens here, not cancel and not show the world what is [usually] happening here during those months,” Collinet said, calling the situation a bummer and a shame. 

The Vancouver International Jazz Festival, which usually happens in the last two weeks of June at venues around the city, is also struggling to deal with the implications of FIFA coming to town. 

While there will still be a festival, it definitely won’t be on the same scale as past years, according to Nina Horvath, the executive director of Coastal Jazz and Blues Society, which puts on the event. 

“I still think it's worth presenting it during FIFA, because I want to show off our city and our local musicians to people who are going to be here from around the world. I think that's what helps bring in that future $1 billion in tourism revenue that they keep projecting, right?” Horvath said, referencing the province’s estimates of FIFA’s economic impact for B.C. 

Horvath said they’ll be going ahead with their smaller shows in various venues like Granville Island. The bigger question is where and when they could put on a larger outdoor weekend event. Jazz Fest typically hosts a big event in šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl'e7énḵ Square outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. However, they know the usual footprint will change and are working with the city to find solutions, Horvath said. 

Like for Public Disco, Jazz Fest’s biggest struggle with the lack of clarity on FIFA’s restrictions is around the brand protection zone. “If I can't go out and sell my event to sponsors, then I can't have an event, because I won't have enough money,” to put it on, Horvath explained. 

Horvath told Vancity Lookout that the “very slow” communication between FIFA, the host committee, and events like hers has been frustrating. “Since March 2024 I've been reaching out to the city and the province [saying] ‘we need to start planning. We need to know what we can do and what we can't do,” Horvath said, pointing out that budgets and staffing need to be figured out well in advance. 

“We still don't have a complete answer, so that’s been challenging,” Horvath said, adding that the communications she’s received from the city’s host committee is that the holdup on specifics is on FIFA’s end.  

It’s a challenging situation Lai said, because “city staff and the province are working under constraints that we don't know and they can't share with us, but also that doesn't help anyone.”

In Lai’s general experience with how major sporting events are organized, there’s a lot less clarity with the World Cup than he would expect of an event that’s happening in less than 11 months.

“There's no answers, there's just a blank wall of silence where we'll engage with [the city and province], but when the engagement happens, there are more questions than answers and there's no certainty,” Lai said. 

“The City of Vancouver remains committed to transparency and keeping the public informed and engaged continues to be a top priority. We will continue to share updates as they become available,” the host committee said in its statement. 

Horvath said she’s not opposed to destination events like FIFA that bring lots of people to Vancouver. 

However, in future, “it needs to be done in a way that engages local stakeholders and parallel events like ours much more proactively in the future, because that's what's been challenging,” Horvath said. “It felt like [the city] came to us after things had already been agreed upon and then went ‘oh, right, there are other events happening in the city’.”

Long-term impact 

Lai said the cancellation represents a giant question mark for Dragon Boat BC. 

“There's going to be longer-term ripple effects… [and a] real risk that some of what we do is going to disappear and not come back at the same scope because of FIFA,” Lai said, emphasizing that they need the city and province to support the organization through the disruption in a way that hasn’t happened yet. 

None of the organizations Vancity Lookout spoke with have been offered compensation for the disruptions by FIFA, the province, or the city.

Collinet, with Public Disco, pointed out that messing with the cadence of annual festivals, particularly around sponsorship, funding, and debt, could undermine the viability of their whole business model. 

Collinet isn’t concerned about the long-term health of Public Disco, with it being a rare cultural organization that’s doing well right now, but did say the FIFA restrictions could complicate their sponsorship arrangements. Some of its sponsors are on three-year deals, and if any of next year’s events are cancelled, Collinet may be out some sponsorship dollars by not producing the number and scale of agreed-upon events. 

In its statement to Vancity Lookout, the city’s host committee declined to respond to questions about how they are ensuring that annual Vancouver events, like the Dragon Boat Festival in False Creek, will be able to continue to operate in future years despite restrictions imposed by its agreement with FIFA. 

The Lookout’s analysis

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