With the 2026 FIFA World Cup fast approaching, details are falling into place about what the tournament will look like for Canada, which is hosting the event for the first time.
This Monday, FIFA announced that UBC will be an integral part of the Canada Soccer Men’s National Team's participation in the games: the team’s “base camp” will be at the National Soccer Development Centre (NSDC) on campus.
In practice, this means that Canada’s soccer operations will be run out of the NSDC, both prior to and throughout the duration of the World Cup, hosting the team’s staff and players for training. The team will open the tournament against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Toronto on Jun. 12, but will be playing the majority of their games in the group stage in Vancouver, returning to the city for games against Qatar and Switzerland on Jun. 18 and 24, respectively. While not training, the team will stay downtown at The Westin Bayshore.
This has been a long time coming for the NSDC. The facility, which currently houses both UBC’s varsity soccer programs and the Vancouver Whitecaps of the MLS, was built with this kind of use in mind. While the Whitecaps were always intended as the primary tenant of the NSDC, the BC government — who partnered with the Whitecaps and UBC to build the facility — had bigger plans from the start. In a 2012 press release, the province said it hoped the centre would “help Vancouver attract and host major sporting events — including the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, a Major League Soccer all-star game, and major international friendlies.”
The provincial government ultimately committed $11 million towards the $27-million project, according to Board of Governors documents. The Whitecaps paid for the rest, and UBC donated the land.
Returns on that investment have so far been mixed. While Vancouver has hosted the Men’s National Team in international competition three times since the NSDC opened, they haven’t hit the other two targets they set out for themselves. The opening of the facility in June of 2017 came too late for the 2015 Women’s World Cup, with teams training at Empire Field in Vancouver instead of the NSDC. No MLS all-star events have taken place in the city in the near-decade since its inception.
With soccer’s biggest stage choosing the NSDC as one of only two “base camp” sites in the country, that changes.
While unprecedented, FIFA and Canada Soccer’s choice makes sense. Despite the lack of major international recognition up to this point, the NSDC has been a success locally, especially for the Whitecaps. Even though the Whitecaps have been a fixture in Vancouver since 1974 — across multiple leagues — prior to the NSDC, they never had a dedicated training space. In the Whitecaps’ press release when the NSDC opened, they listed nine different facilities that they had trained at since their founding — a nomadic journey.
That journey ended in 2017. The Whitecaps have trained at the facility since it opened, with the NSDC housing not just their first team, but also their academy teams, including Whitecaps FC 2 in the MLS Next Pro development league, as well as their U-18, U-16 and U-15 squads. They also gained another professional tenant in Vancouver Rise FC, who began play in the newly-founded Northern Super League in 2025.
The 38,000 square foot facility consists of a three-storey field house, three grass playing fields and two artificial turf fields. It provides enough capacity for 200 players and personnel to operate out of the building continuously throughout the season.
That capacity seems to have played a key role in Canada Soccer choosing the NSDC for their World Cup base camp. In Canada Soccer’s official release published on Tuesday, they note that the selection of the NSDC was the result of “an extensive evaluation process to identify a base camp in Canada that would meet the sporting, logistical and operational demands of a home FIFA World Cup.”
The NSDC also earned high praise from the coaching staff in Canada Soccer’s release. Jesse Marsch, head coach of the Men’s National Team, noted that “by establishing our team base camp in Vancouver, we are securing a stable, private and world-class environment where our team staff can operate at the highest level to support the team’s success.”
The timeline on when fans can expect to see Canada take to the fields at the NSDC is unclear. The team is currently in Charlotte, North Carolina, having been in the American city since May 25 for their pre-tournament training camp, with Marsch making a final decision on the team’s World Cup roster once the camp ends on May 29. From there, they will travel back to Canada to participate in two pre-tournament “send-off matches,” one in Edmonton on Jun. 1 against Uzbekistan and another on Jun. 5 against Ireland in Montréal.
After that, the race to the first official match is on, with no matches or formal camps until the World Cup officially starts. It’s hard to know for certain, but it’s fair to expect the team to set up shop in Vancouver sometime after that last match against Ireland. Then, while they'll start their tournament in Toronto on Jun. 12, the rest of their group stage will be on the West Coast, playing games in Vancouver and training at UBC.
