Toronto, in the first week of June 2026, will be twenty-three degrees Celsius at kick-off, the sun still high over Lake Ontario, the skyline glass and construction cranes all the way to the CN Tower. BMO Field, now officially called Toronto Stadium for the tournament, sits at Exhibition Place on the city’s western waterfront, a fifteen-minute streetcar ride from the downtown core. It is a place that smells, in summer, of cut grass and lake air, and that, on a World Cup match day, will contain roughly thirty thousand more people than it was originally built to hold.
That last fact is the one English supporters planning their trips need to understand. The Athletic reported this month that BMO Field has been expanded for the World Cup from its permanent capacity of approximately thirty thousand to a temporary configuration of roughly forty-five thousand, with additional seating structures erected behind both goals and along portions of the east sideT2, The Athletic. The expansion is a standard FIFA requirement for World Cup host venues, the kind of structural intervention that Doha undertook on a vastly larger scale in 2022 and that South Africa built from scratch in 2010. What is different, in Toronto, is the feeling.
Fans who have attended Toronto FC matches and Major League Soccer events at the expanded ground report a perceptible sway in the temporary upper tiers, a structural movement that is not dangerous but is, for those unaccustomed to it, alarming. “You feel it shaking,” one supporter told The Athletic’s John Muller, describing the sensation of standing in the upper sections of the temporary stands as the crowd moves in unisonT2, The Athletic. Engineers consulted by the publication confirmed that the movement is within acceptable safety tolerances, that temporary grandstand structures are designed to flex, and that the sensation is a product of engineering rather than negligence. The explanation is reassuring. The feeling, supporters say, is not.
For England fans, the practical implications are specific. FIFA has not yet confirmed which group-stage fixtures will be assigned to Toronto, but the city is one of two Canadian host venues alongside Vancouver, and it will stage five group matches and two knockout-round fixtures across the tournament’s first three weeks. Ticket allocations for England’s group matches, wherever they are played, will be distributed through the FA’s official supporters’ scheme and through FIFA’s own ballot system, a process that, in previous cycles, has left thousands of travelling fans reliant on secondary markets and resale platforms that do not always guarantee seat location within a given stand.
The distinction matters at Toronto Stadium. The permanent lower bowl, the structure that existed before the expansion, offers the familiar experience of a purpose-built football ground: steep rake, good sightlines, seats bolted to concrete. The temporary upper tiers, the ones added for the World Cup, are a different proposition. They are higher, steeper in their own way, and they move. Fans who are allocated seats in these sections should arrive early, acclimatise to the sway, and understand that the sensation diminishes as the match progresses and the crowd settles into rhythm. It is not a reason to avoid the ground. It is a reason to be prepared.
There is also the question of personal safety in a broader sense. Temporary stadium infrastructure at major tournaments has a mixed record. The Arena Corinthians in São Paulo, used for the 2014 World Cup, saw a crane collapse during construction that killed two workers. Qatar’s temporary and demountable venues drew scrutiny for labour conditions. Toronto’s expansion has been built under Canadian construction standards, which are among the most rigorous in the world, and there is no evidence of the kind of systemic failures that plagued previous tournaments. But travelling supporters, particularly those in the upper temporary tiers, should know where their nearest exit is, should follow stewarding instructions without delay, and should not attempt to stand in sections where standing is not permitted. The structure can handle the load. It handles it less comfortably when the load moves unpredictably.
The wider context for English supporters is the one that attends every World Cup in a non-traditional host nation. Toronto is a football city in the way that many North American cities are football cities: it has a passionate MLS following, a strong immigrant-football culture rooted in Italian, Portuguese, Caribbean, and East African communities, and a general populace for whom the World Cup is an event of genuine civic excitement but not the singular sporting obsession it is in England. Fans will be welcomed. They will also be guests. The city’s public transport system, the TTC, will run extended services on match days, but it is not built for the volumes that a World Cup crowd generates, and the Exhibition Place stop on the 509 streetcar line will be the single point of rail access to the ground. Walking from the nearest subway station, Dufferin or Bathurst, adds fifteen minutes on foot through residential neighbourhoods that are pleasant but not designed for sixty thousand pedestrians converging at once.
The experience, for those who make the journey, will be unlike any World Cup venue England have played at in living memory. Toluca has altitude. Doha had air conditioning and an entire city built for the occasion. Toronto has a lake, a skyline, temporary stands that sway in the wind, and a host nation that, in its quieter way, cares about this tournament as deeply as any nation that has ever staged one. The shaking, in the end, is part of it. The ground is not yet permanent. It does not need to be. It needs to hold.
