Vancouver is installing hundreds of new, temporary surveillance cameras ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a move city officials say is about public safety, but privacy experts say deserves closer scrutiny.
With the province estimating roughly 350,000 visitors to B.C. Place during the tournament next summer, the city will be under added pressure to ensure safety and security.
As part of its preparation for that, blue signs warning of temporary surveillance have begun appearing near the stadium, prompting questions about how the cameras will be used and who will have access to the footage.
Roughly 200 cameras will be installed as part of a FIFA requirement in areas supporting World Cup-related activities, including B.C. Place, the FIFA Fan Festival at the PNE and training sites.
The Vancouver Host Committee says the cameras are being installed now for testing, but will not be operational until the tournament begins. During that testing phase, captured images will be blurred to protect privacy.
It also says the cameras will be used strictly for public safety and removed once the World Cup ends.
Vancouver installing 200 surveillance cameras for FIFA World Cup
The Vancouver Host Committee says access to surveillance footage will be limited to authorized personnel and handled in line with city policy and privacy law.
“Footage will be shared as needed with FIFA and security contractors,” it added.
That detail has raised concerns among privacy advocates, who say the issue is less about the cameras themselves and more about where data goes once it leaves city control.
“FIFA is not a Canadian public body. Security contractors, they may or may not be based inside of Canada. Hopefully they are,” said Aislin Jackson, policy staff counsel with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
“Our privacy legislation, and cyber security in general, we’re very sensitive to when data moves outside of the boundaries of Canada because other jurisdictions have less privacy protective legislation than we do.”
Jackson says footage collected in public spaces can still contain sensitive personal information, particularly if footage is stored, analyzed or combined with other data.
“An image of somebody or audio of them that contains biometric information, that’s actually quite sensitive, especially in the age of generative AI,” she said.
The host committee says use and access will follow city CCTV policy and provincial privacy law.
The new surveillance measures follow a temporary bylaw approved by Vancouver city council in November that adjusts several city rules for the World Cup.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 bylaw includes restrictions on street vending, street entertainment and distributing advertising material — with fines of up to $1,000 for people who fail to comply.
City of Vancouver introduces new bylaw for 2026 FIFA World Cup
Those rules will be in effect for a nine-week period beginning May 13, 2026, and apply within roughly a two-kilometre radius of B.C. Place and a 100-metre radius of the FIFA Fan Festival at the PNE — the same areas where the new surveillance cameras are being installed.
Kristen Thomasen, an associate professor and chair in law, robotics and society at the University of Windsor, says surveillance tied to large events can change how people experience public space.
“In the spaces in which these cameras are operating, people will be expected to behave in a way that FIFA is designating, in a way that the city is designating,” Thomasen said. “It’s really concerning to me that an international sporting organization can dictate what people in Vancouver can do in their public and shared spaces.”
The Vancouver Host Committee is required under the Host City Agreement to support FIFA’s global brand protection program.
This is not the first time Vancouver has expanded security ahead of a major event.
During the 2010 Winter Olympics, nearly 1,000 security cameras were activated across the city to monitor crowds. About 900 of the cameras were installed by the RCMP-led Olympic security team around venues for the Games, while another 90 cameras were installed by the City of Vancouver around public sites in the downtown area.
The City of Vancouver says the 90 cameras it installed for those Games are no longer operating. CBC News has contacted the RCMP to ask whether its 900 cameras are still in use.
Similar security measures have been seen in other host cities. London added thousands of CCTV cameras ahead of the 2012 Olympics, while France significantly expanded surveillance powers for the 2024 Paris Games.
That history is part of why some privacy advocates warn about what they call “surveillance creep,” where tools introduced for a specific event remain in place after that event has concluded.
“You have an extraordinary situation where you can bring in extraordinary measures, and that recalibrates what people expect and what people think of as reasonable and normal,” Jackson said.
“That can lead to this sort of creep of intrusions into the personal and the private realm, and intrusions into other interests that we want to protect and want to thrive in a free and democratic society.”
The Vancouver Host Committee says all cameras installed for the World Cup will be removed once the tournament ends.
