By: Luis Miguel De Castro
It was past midnight in the Philippines, but no one in my friend’s backyard felt tired. Glued to the screen as Argentina and France delivered what would become one of the greatest World Cup finals in history. Every four years, the world stops to share the same excitement. Every goal, every save, every breakaway had us shouting like lifelong fans, even though none of us were citizens of the two countries battling for the trophy. The house was filled with adrenaline as Lionel Messi chased his destiny and Kylian Mbappe refusing to back down from the challenge. In those ninety minutes and the chaos that followed, soccer became an experience that turned an ordinary night into a memory full of mixed emotions and the pure magic of the beautiful game of soccer. Four years later, the same global tournament is now heading for Toronto.
A city long accustomed to global attention, a much larger spotlight is approaching.
As the countdown to the 2026 FIFA World Cup ticks forward, anticipation is building in newsrooms and production studios across the country.
For the first time in history, Canada will host men’s World Cup matches, transforming Toronto into an international media hub. With six games in the city and a month-long fan festival at Fort York, journalists have one task to complete: narrating a worldwide tournament from a uniquely Canadian perspective.
This moment comes at a time when the media landscape is changing dramatically. Both casual and passionate sports fans are using short-form videos, real-time updates and multilingual content to consume sports in new ways. The opportunity is enormous for Canadian journalists, but the responsibility is even greater.
Sherry Doiron, is a Sport Management professor at Humber Polytechnic and a former staff member for several major international sporting events.
“To have something like FIFA World Cup come into your backyard, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime generational moment,” she says. “You couldn’t ask for a better opportunity and you wouldn’t want something like this to pass you by.”
Doiron has worked at the Vancouver Olympics, Commonwealth Games, Pan American Games and world championships. Her experience provides rare insight into what lies ahead for Canada’s journalists.
“What we don’t really understand is how much of an inner working it takes to make that happen. So, that fan experience takes a lot of lifting behind the scenes,”
-Sherry Doiron
As Canada prepares to host the world cup, journalists must also be prepared to tell it.
One of the earliest signals of Toronto’s ambitions came this September, when Humber Polytechnic announced a formal partnership with the 2026 FIFA World Cup Toronto under the Host City Supporter Program.
“Their program is called the Host City Supporter Program. And so currently, right now, there’s two organizations that are involved, Ontario Power Generation and then Humber Polytechnic,” Doiron says.
The partnership allows Humber to contribute through education, community engagement and workforce development. For sport management and journalism students, it’s an unprecedented learning opportunity.
But much of the work is happening behind the scenes.
“Some of the information, to be honest with you right now, you know, there’s a lot of work that’s going on behind the scenes. So some of that information is not quite ready yet,” Doiron says. “And in some cases, some of it, we’re in the midst of working through it.”
Still, the opportunities are already beginning to materialize. Thousands of volunteers are being selected and trained, with emails going out for interviews and placements.
“There’ll be chances for students and faculty as well to get involved through different experiential opportunities,” she says. “But there’ll definitely be quite a few opportunities for our students to get involved, for sure.”
Behind the stadium gates, the World Cup is a story that’s decades in the making. For Canadian journalists, that story begins now.
When the World Cup arrives, international journalists will descend on Toronto, but local reporters will be uniquely positioned to frame what the city represents.
Doiron says these narratives extend beyond sport.
“What are the stories of the people behind the scenes? What are the stories of the people who have chosen to volunteer?” Sherry Doiron
Toronto is preparing initiatives that outlive the tournament. One example is Soccer for All, a city program that will build mini-pitches in underserved neighbourhoods and remove barriers to participation.
Doiron believes journalists will play a crucial role in how these stories resonate globally.
“What do you think the rest of the world needs to know about this amazing opportunity? Because there will be a lot of little storylines that can go out and I think that’s the challenge,” she says.
This pattern echoes academic work on sport mega-event legacies. A 2022 review of World Cup and Olympic hosts found that although early debate focuses on costs and controversy, narratives around the event itself tend to shift toward national pride, tourism and community “feel-good” effects once the games begin. Canadian journalists will likely navigate the same arc.
Before kick-off, the pressure will be on finances, logistics and public investment. After kick off, attention will shift toward understanding how Toronto hosts, how Canadians celebrate and how newcomers experience the global game.
To understand what Canadian journalists will face during the World Cup in 2026, it helps to look back at Brazil 2014.
Thiago Neuenschwander, a multilingual journalist now based in Toronto, covered that event from Recife.
“We had a huge preparation. We started in 2013 with the Confederations Cup,” he says.
Brazil’s Confederations Cup served as a test run, forcing reporters to adapt months before the World Cup began.
“ So in this year, between the Confederations Cup and the World Cup, we had a lot of planning,” Neuenschwander says.
But the biggest shift was linguistic.
“The majority of reporters started to learn other languages. So all reporters involved in the coverage of the World Cup started to learn English because we received people from a lot of countries,” Neuenschwander exclaims.
Multilingual storytelling became essential. International fans arrived with expectations that local media would meet them halfway.
“It’s not only the sports reporter. All the media outlets were involved in some way in the coverage,” he says. “We don’t have to give importance just to the sports aspect of the World Cup. It’s important to humanize the storytelling.”
Neuenschwander’s experience mirrors the challenges Canadian journalists will soon face. Toronto is already one of the world’s most multilingual media markets and the World Cup will amplify that diversity.
“Toronto is a multicultural city. I think it will be easy for you to accomplish this,” he says.
Canada has a structural advantage. Spanish will be an official tournament language starting in 2026, joining English and French as official languages already.
But Neuenschwander believes that true multicultural storytelling requires more than translation. True multicultural storytelling requires perspective.
“You need to involve more people from different parts of the world in this coverage. As you have journalists from Africa, from Asia, and Europe, you can have their perspectives about what’s happening in the city, how they see the tournament,” Neuenschwander emphasizes.
Beyond broadcasting rights and multilingual reporting, journalists will face a rapidly evolving stadium environment.
Doiron notes how digitization is reshaping the fan journey.
“One of the biggest movements is now making stadiums very tech-savvy. So, it’s when you do have fans there, or people that are spectating have like the ultimate engagement,” she says.
From ticket purchasing to concessions to in-seat engagement, the modern stadium is designed to capture data, attention and emotion.
“You have an expectation that this is going to be the biggest moment of your life because you can say, I attended a FIFA World Cup game,” Doiron says.
These expectations extend beyond the stadium gates. An IBM global study of sports fans found that more than half of Canadian respondents 56 per cent go to social media for extra sports content and 71 per cent of those fans are watching highlight videos of the best moments. Over a third say they watch summaries or highlights at least weekly, with 36 per cent doing so daily.
This trend is transforming how audiences follow tournaments and how journalists must respond. For Neuenschwander, the contrast between 2014 and today is remarkable.
“Ten years ago when I was covering the World Cup, Instagram was still just a photographic tool. So we don’t have this real-time coverage,” he says.
“I think nowadays, people like so much short videos. This could be highlighted in the website or in the profiles of the outlets,” he says. “So today it’s an advantage for you guys. You have so many tools. You can have podcasts, live transmissions in the stadium, interactive content, instant analysis, software games.”
As a result, journalists are forced to work across a variety of platforms simultaneously, normalizing live statistics, written stories, reels, explainers, TikTok’s and multilingual updates.
This new reality puts pressure on newsrooms but creates opportunities for innovation, collaboration and creative storytelling. Historically, mega-event coverage follows predictable phases. Doiron explains the tension that builds before a tournament begins.
“And a lot of times, leading into hosting an event, the fixation, the storytelling is always going to be around how much does it cost.” she says.
She notes how this framing rapidly shifts once matches start.
“But like once that it gets here and then people get the spirit of the game, then all everyone wants to talk about is how connected they feel and how the experience was,” she says.
This emotional transformation is critical. Research consistently shows that once an event starts, narratives shift toward national pride, community connection and shared celebration.
For journalists, the challenge is to document both the scrutiny and the spirit, the accountability and the energy that make a city come alive.
For aspiring journalists, the 2026 World Cup comes at a critical point in time. Young reporters need to adjust fast because traditional newsroom jobs are becoming fewer and more dependent on freelance, digital and social-first roles.
“You can be ready to do whatever appears to you. You never can wait for something to come to you,”
– Thiago Neuenschwander
For him, the best reporting still happens away from the desk.
“The good reporter is always on the street. Tell them not to be too much in the newsroom. Go to the street and talk with people,” he says. “It’s how the good story starts.”
And with the world arriving in Toronto, opportunities will be everywhere.
“You have so much, so good opportunities to bring a good story for your audience,” he says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Journalists in Canada are getting ready for something bigger than a tournament as they get ready to host the most-watched sporting event in the world. Through languages, cultures, neighbourhoods and events that will leave a lasting impression on future generations, they are getting ready to define how Canada is perceived.
Doiron says the impact will stretch far beyond the month-long event.
“It’s that historical moment,” she says. “The learnings do carry on, we’ll be able to bring students back as guest speakers, they can talk about this moment in time that they had.”
For journalists, that moment begins with a single question. How will they tell the story of Canada’s World Cup? In a city built by diversity and possibility, the answer may be the future of Canadian sports media.