World Cup Base Camps Show Canada Behind The Curve In Facilities

Of the 48 nations set to compete in the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, only two will call Canada home.

That’s just 4% of the tournament’s base camps, which isn’t exactly an even split for the tri-hosted tournament held in Canada, USA, and Mexico.

The United States claims the lion’s share of hosting duties with 39 national team base camps, while Mexico holds just 7 – just over half of the 12 grounds the country had ready to host nations during the tournament, but still more than triple what Canada ultimately pulled.

There were 64 base camps for the participating teams to choose from, but even from the final candidates just two came from Canada, claimed by our own nation and Panama. Extreme optimists will call that a 100% success rate.

The truth is, however, there is a significant lack of world-class infrastructure for a country which cracked an all-time high of 26th overall in FIFA Rankings last year under head coach Jesse Marsch.

While the Canadian national team surely needed to stay situated on home soil – the same goes for the other two host nations – the news that just one other country found a temporary home on Canadian soil will be unsurprising given the lack of world-class facilities available in the country.

Despite a lead time of eight years for Canada to co-host the pinnacle of world football, it was only just this month that federal funding has been committed to build a permanent national training centre for our own national team, with 30th-ranked Canada being the only major footballing nation in the western hemisphere still without a dedicated national training centre.

While the US will find itself situated in Irvine for the World Cup, it usually calls the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center just south of Atlanta home, while Mexico is sticking to its usual turf through the High-Performance Center in southern Mexico City.

That isn’t to say there weren’t those trying to get ahead: back in 2022, former York United (now Inter Toronto) President Angus McNab had championed bringing a training facility to Woodbine with the World Cup in mind, though the project has been left behind after his club’s principal owner Greenpark Group sold the team.

There were rumours that some Canadian Premier League facilities were in contention for base camp bids, though none ultimately made way to the final list of 64 possible base camps.

It was only this month that Canada Soccer announced that the Canadian government committed $9.8 million for a National Training Centre project. Canada Soccer has already received 18 early-bird submissions for this, but will only launch a formal request for proposals after the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup has already come and gone.

Canada’s selection of Vancouver’s UBC campus-based National Soccer Development Centre is a smart one, though the nearby Memorial Park was initially slated as frontrunner. The scope and length of upgrades required for it to meet World Cup standards were not met with enthusiasm from locals, so that project was scrapped in favour of the familiar centre at the University of British Columbia.

One senses that Vancouver could have been a popular spot for more than one country, if not for the lack of appropriate facilities. The State of California, for example, will host six nations during the World Cup, two more than centrally-located Kansas City. Evidently, the west coast is an attractive destination if one has the means to provide.

Vancouver will host two of Canada’s three group stage games. Should Les Rouges advance, they could face two more knockout-round matches at BC Place, while a second-place group finish would see them travel straight down the west coast to California.

Panama will be the only other country calling Canada home for the tournament with the surprising inclusion of Alliston, Ontario’s Nottawasaga Training Site. That’s a family-owned resort that boasts two full soccer pitches – it used to have just one, until the German national team asked for a second in ’94. Since then, it’s had two.

With Panama playing twice in Toronto and no suitable facilities available for use in North America’s fourth-largest city, they’ll head north to a fairly hidden gem, though not quite north enough to call it full-on cottage country.

Ghana and Croatia will both play one group stage match in Toronto and have the potential for a second to follow in the group stage, though they will be staying in a Rhode Island private school and a Virginia high school, respectively. Toronto proper, as it stands, mustered exactly zero base camp options despite being a host city, falling short of what FIFA asks of a host city.

With over ten million people calling the Greater Toronto and Metro Vancouver areas home, having just one base camp between them is fairly shocking. As former Cavalry goalkeeper coach Jordan Santiago pointed out, there will be more US high schools hosting visiting World Cup countries than Canada itself.

With the Northern Super League hoping to expand further into western Canada and the Canadian Premier League set for a big domestic audience boost, perhaps there is more infrastructure growth on the horizon, though stadium grounds and space for professional facilities have been longstanding roadblocks for the strictly domestic game.

Canada’s two domestic professional leagues only launched in 2019 and 2025, respectively, and many fans have yet to discover them. As those grow, fanbases will nurture cultural support over time, and with that comes improvements to clubs, players, and facilities. This is a process which takes a lot of time, particularly in a country where football has plenty of competition from other sporting markets.

For now, however, it’s a real shame that such sustainable investment couldn’t come before the pinnacle of world football graced the country. Canada will welcome the world next month, but its persistent problem is that the country still lacks an infrastructure that truly reflects its own rapid growth in the sport.

Whether that stems from cultural or fiscal issues, or simply bad timing, is up for debate, but if Canada ever aims to host another major international tournament, hopefully by then it will have the means to host more than itself and one guest.

Header Image Photo Credit: John Jacques