It matters how we remember the summer of 2026 when, for 39 days, Vancouver played host to the largest sporting event in world history. Over the course of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, 367,000 ticketed fans attended one of the 7 matches at BC Place; 500,000 people attended the FIFA Fan Festival in Hastings Park; and thousands more gathered in Vancouver’s streets to take part in the fanfare. The energy across the city was palpable; the atmosphere was “electric”. This is how our government, who collectively spent $740 million on the tournament, wants us to remember it.

But behind this spectacular account of the Games lies another. While the 2026 FIFA World Cup was in Vancouver, people already at disproportionate risk of criminalization had to contend with the 1300 police officers deployed on each Match Day – the largest deployment of law enforcement in the city’s history. People who call the streets home were asked to move along because they were deemed unfit for the “clean”, “beautiful” image Vancouver so desperately wanted to display. And people who have been and continue to be abandoned by the state were asked to reckon with the reality that their government would rather bankroll a weeks-long sporting spectacle than invest in life-saving health care, housing, and community supports.

This, too, belongs in the archive.

Click here to read:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

This is the fourth and final Part of Pivot’s FIFA on the Block Series. In this blog, we take stock of Vancouver’s experience hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup. We catalogue the costs, the impacts, and the legacies of the Games – all of which we refuse to let the sensationalized, popular narrative of FIFA’s presence in Vancouver obscure, and all of which are critical to remember when (not if) the next mega event comes to town. This archive is intended to equip people in Vancouver and our allies across Turtle Island and the world with tools for future resistance movements. Here are five realities about the summer of 2026 that we insist on remembering.

1. We will remember what Vancouver’s “beautification” required

“For five weeks, Vancouver felt different”: this is what people struck by the shiny, vibrant version of Vancouver during the FIFA event period observed.

Granville Street was indisputably one of the most striking examples of “difference.” During the Games, it was impossible not to notice that the typically “run down” Granville Strip had transformed into a hub of energy, serving as a pedestrian-only zone and a corridor for FIFA fandom, with daily street parties and local bars televising matches.

This account of Granville’s new-found beauty, however, entirely ignores the organized campaign of displacement that its transformation required. Months ago, the City of Vancouver and BC’s Ministry of Housing agreed to close three single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) along the Granville Strip: the Lugaat Hotel, St Helen’s Hotel, and Granville Villa – a decision that resulted in hundreds of tenants losing their housing. Tenants of the Lugaat Hotel were forced to abandon their homes by the beginning of June, just days before the FIFA Games kicked off. Once low-income tenants were forced out, Granville’s “beautification” campaign continued with heavy policing, street sanitation, and bylaw enforcement both before and during the Games. In other words, Granville Street felt “different” because the visible markers of poverty and organized state abandonment had been intentionally obscured.

Though tourists and soccer fans were less present in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, residents were similarly subject to increased policing and associated displacement throughout the event period. In the lead-up to the Games, Pivot skilled up 56 community members to document police enforcement actions through its Legal Observer program. Legal Observers, who were strategically deployed in shifts on FIFA Match Days, witnessed a significant police and bylaw presence in the DTES in the form of coordinated street sweep teams. These teams typically consisted of at least three city workers, a bylaw officer, and two police officers escorted by a dump truck, a cargo truck, and a police car.

Legal Observers watched as street sweep teams worked their way up Hastings and the surrounding blocks throughout the day. Police stood by on foot as City Workers approached people sheltering outside and either asked them to pack their belongings into a plastic bag or put their belongings into a garbage bin to be “voluntarily stored” and — in theory —retrieved later. In reality, this “storage” is neither secure nor voluntary; items are only returned if the owner can complete the applicable retrieval process before the disposal deadline (if they haven’t already been disposed on the basis of being “soiled” – City Workers’ default assumption when it comes to DTES essential belongings), and the standards for how and when this process must be completed remain inconsistent and inaccessible. Items being “stored” were generally seized without providing any paperwork or notice to the owner, although impoundment notices were occasionally observed. Pivot’s call for the City to create a fair, consistent, and accessible process for retrieving belongings remains unmet and pressing.

Each team’s enforcement was inconsistent: sometimes City Workers asked people not to sit on the streets and/or to move along, sometimes Workers allowed them to stay but asked them to tidy up their belongings, and other times Workers allowed them to stay but seized their belongings altogether. Legal Observers also witnessed instances of City Workers throwing away belongings, when their owners left them briefly unattended, for instance to use the bathroom. It should be noted that, during the Games, public washrooms and other desperately needed social infrastructures proliferated in tourist destinations and around the stadium; meanwhile, the DTES has been systematically losing public amenities including park benches, toilets, and water stations for the last decade.

Stay tuned for further communications about the outcomes and observations of our LO program

Police Oversight with Evidence and Research (P.O.W.E.R.), a community-led research project focused on police accountability, also observed a heightened VPD presence at the intersection of Main and Hastings. Through cop-watch shifts throughout the DTES, P.O.W.E.R witnessed police shakedowns, coercive displacement, smashed glass pipes (the same pipes handed out by health authorities), and physical violence. Using field notes, P.O.W.E.R produced a map of some significant events documented during cop watch shifts between June 12 and July 15. The map visualizes copwatch field notes regarding a series of punitive police interactions throughout the DTES concentrated around the Main and Hastings area. Importantly, this map only includes some – and not all – significant events P.O.W.E.R members observed during this period.

P.O.W.E.R. has withheld specific dates and times with this limited data for confidentiality considerations.

P.O.W.E.R also reported an increase in bylaw ticketing. As we have previously written, bylaw tickets are a key tool used to punish and displace people who rely on public space. Although the FIFA Bylaw, which increased fines for things like placing merchandise on the streets and postering on “street furniture”, did not come into force until May 13, 2026, P.O.W.E.R received reports of people being issued $1000 tickets as early as April. Pivot has filed an FOI requesting a log of all of the tickets issued under the FIFA Bylaw between May 13, 2026 and July 20, 2026.

It was the combined effect of increased policing, forced displacement, and ticketing – with devastating impacts for people who rely on public space – that created the version of Vancouver on display during the Games. When we remember, then, that Vancouver looked “different” during FIFA, we must also remember why.

2. We will remember the City’s attempts to invisibilize FIFA’s human rights impacts

In the lead up to the Games, Pivot wrote about how the city government, including both Vancouver City Council and the Host City Committee (the body responsible for spearheading key elements of event planning and execution), had failed to effectively mitigate FIFA’s human rights implications for Vancouver’s residents. The Host City Committee’s Human Rights Action Plan was largely silent on the impacts likely to be experienced first and foremost by the City’s most vulnerable residents, including the displacement and criminalization described above. Those blind spots were further compounded by City Council decisions to either vote down or rule out of order a litany of motions designed to reduce human rights violations throughout the Games, including a motion to expand low-barrier shelter spaces and a motion to suspend penalties for individuals sheltering in vehicles during FIFA.

In the aftermath of the Games, however, it is clear that not only did the City fail to prepare for FIFA’s human rights impacts – but they also made it so that those impacts would be inherently difficult to track.

The appropriate channel for reporting human rights complaints throughout the Games depended on whether the alleged violation occurred inside or outside of an official FIFA event venue. People who experienced a human rights-related incident within an official FIFA venue (for example, inside BC Place while watching a match) were encouraged to submit a complaint via FIFA’s Reporting Portal. That Portal, however, was not equipped to receive reports of human rights violations arising from outside of an official event venue. Instead, Vancouver’s Host City Committee was responsible for developing and administering reporting channels that would apply everywhere else in the city.

Before the Games, Pivot and others called for a centralized, accessible reporting mechanism specifically designed to receive and provide redress for human rights violations associated with the FIFA Games. Instead, the Host City Committee chose to direct people to submit human rights complaints through 311 – an existing, notoriously inaccessible service with zero human rights expertise, intended to address non-emergency issues such as potholes, graffiti, and missed garbage pick-up.

Once the Games started, it became clear that nothing had been done to bolster 311’s capacity to be used as a portal for receiving and reviewing information about human rights violations. The 311 mobile phone app, for example, had no specific portal set up for users to submit human rights complaints. The hyperlink entitled “FIFA 2026 World Cup 2026 Human Rights” redirected app users to FIFA’s own Reporting Portal – which, as noted above, could only receive complaints from inside an official FIFA event venue. Anyone determined to provide the City with information about a human rights violation would have to do so through the section entitled “General Feedback.”

Besides 311, the Human Rights Plan pointed towards 6 different helplines that people could contact about FIFA-related human rights issues – namely, VictimLinkBC, 211, Racist Incident Helpline, Salal Sexual Violence Support Centre 24-Hour Crisis Line, and Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline. Not only is this disjointed reporting structure unnecessarily complex for people to navigate, but it also spreads reporting data across 7 different service providers, all outside of the City itself.

In failing to provide a tailored, centralized, and accessible reporting mechanism, the City all but guaranteed it would have no human rights data to report. This means that specific accounts of FIFA-related human rights violations are not likely to show up in the public record. For example, an article published by Business in Vancouver on June 26, 2026 (halfway through the event period) quoted the City as saying that “no human rights violation incidents related to vulnerable people had been reported.”

When the City tries to claim that the data does not show significant human rights impacts associated with the Games, we will remember that this was by design.

3. We will remember FIFA as an economic and political choice

Vancouver’s experience hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup shows us what the City, together with support from all other levels of government, can make happen where there is political will. All three levels of government can work together to find a collective $740 million, pass new and extraordinary bylaws, execute a sophisticated marketing campaign, deploy a massive police presence reinforced by outside forces, and shut down city streets when they want to. The same state powers could also be deployed to solve the decade-long toxic drug crisis (rather than campaign against and shutter life-saving overdose prevention sites in the Downtown core), or to ensure housing for all. Instead, those powers were mobilized so that Vancouver could host a weeks-long public spectacle for one of the most corrupt sporting organizations in the world.

So, when we hear governments tell us that they lack the resources to pay for life-saving infrastructure – dignified housing, health care, and community supports – we will remember what they chose to fund instead.

4. We will remember how community organized in response to FIFA

Given the City’s failures to introduce meaningful measures to mitigate FIFA’s human rights impacts, civil society was forced to step in to fill the void left by government. In the DTES, a rich tapestry of community-led resistance emerged in response to FIFA. P.O.W.E.R, as noted above, had volunteer copwatchers deployed to take detailed field notes on police interactions. P.O.W.E.R also conducted outreach on all 7 Match Days and hosted 4 pop-up overdose prevention sites (POPS). Team members provided harm reduction gear, food, clothing, and hydration supplies, ultimately connecting with 643 people between POPS and outreach. No one overdosed while using at the site.

Sex Workers Interrupting FIFA Atrocities (SWIFA) is another powerful example of peer-based, community-led resistance to FIFA. SWIFA was created in the lead up to the Games by a group of sex workers and harm reduction workers for the express purpose of supporting local sex workers while FIFA was in town. During the event period, SWIFA hosted seven drop-in events (one on each Vancouver Match Day) that were attended by over 900 local sex workers. Each drop-in event offered a safe, dignified space for sex workers to gather and rest free from rampant FIFA-related surveillance and policing surges. The drop-ins also connected people with critical services and supports, including food, clothing and toiletry, harm reduction equipment, cultural and peer support, counselling, and consultations with medics. Over the course of the Games, SWIFA also re-distributed approximately $14,000 in cash stipends directly to sex workers in order to offset FIFA-related disruptions to their livelihoods.

Stay tuned for SWIFA's post-FIFA statement

Pivot, for its part, trained 56 Legal Observers to walk through the DTES and document police enforcement actions. A total of 27 Legal Observers were strategically deployed for 18 shifts across the event period. Pivot also produced a comprehensive Know Your Rights Guide which provided accessible information about peoples’ rights and risks during FIFA. This resource was and remains accessible online, and Pivot also distributed 500 print copies across the DTES.

When we remember government’s failures to safeguard human rights during the 2026 FIFA Games, we will also remember how many people mobilized to protect themselves, their communities, and each other.

5. We will remember FIFA because of the long arc of its impacts

The tournament is now over, the tourists have left the city, and many of the visible markers of event-related fanfare have been cleared away. But the 2026 World Cup is sure to continue shaping the city of Vancouver for years to come.

The City’s policing budget, which ballooned ostensibly to accommodate FIFA-related security demands, is unlikely to decrease again (as the post-2010 Olympics trajectory reveals: the genie never goes back in the bottle). Similarly, although the FIFA 2026 World Cup Bylaw is no longer in effect, its punitive $1000 fines will serve as a convenient precedent the next time the City wishes to introduce a new bylaw or amend an existing one. FIFA, with all the justifications it provided for policy decisions rooted in securitization, has established a new floor, a baseline that will influence City policy for years to come. In other words, we will remember FIFA and the summer of 2026 because we will continue to see its legacies everywhere.

To return to Granville Street: City Council recently decided to keep the Street, originally “beautified” to prepare for FIFA, as a pedestrian-zone until September 2026. This decision is costing the City nearly $5 million, most of which is earmarked for security and policing. Granville Street’s former low-income residents remain pushed out; meanwhile, the street party continues. The Games may be over, but there will be evidence of its legacies everywhere: in our streets, our communities, our political discourse, and our organizing infrastructure.

There will be another mega-event. But we refuse to start our resistance from scratch, to reinvent the wheel. The lessons from FIFA and the summer of 2026 will make us more organized, more prepared, and better equipped to safeguard dignity, justice, and human rights when that next mega-event comes to town. But in order to leverage those lessons, we must first remember them.