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- 1315 Lawrence Ave E,unit 406, M3A 3R3, North York, Ontario
You flew thousands of kilometres to watch the beautiful game. You’ve got your jersey ironed, your face paint ready, and your match schedule printed. But here’s a question most World Cup travel guides never ask: what do you do with the other 20 hours of the day?
Toronto isn’t just a host city. It’s one of the most creative, culturally layered cities on the planet — a place where over 250 ethnicities coexist, where art explodes off every wall, and where you can make something with your hands that you’ll keep for the rest of your life.
This isn’t a list of museums and CN Tower selfies. This is a guide to the creative experiences that football fans actually remember long after the final whistle — the things you make, the skills you try, and the moments that turn a sports trip into a real story.
Here are 10 genuinely creative things to do in Toronto during the World Cup 2026.
This is the one. If you do nothing else on this list, do this.
Rug tufting is the art of using a motorised tufting gun to punch colourful yarn through a fabric backing, creating a thick, plush rug or wall hanging that is entirely your own design. Think of it as painting —, but when you’re done, your canvas is soft enough to put on your living room floor.
ZuoZuo Studio in North York offers fully guided beginner sessions where you walk in with zero experience and walk out three to five hours later carrying a one-of-a-kind piece you made with your own hands. You choose the design, pick your colours from over 50 yarn options, and the expert instructors — Emmanuel and Natasha — guide you through every step from the first loop to the final trim and latex seal.
What makes this perfect for World Cup visitors: a lot of guests are tufting their country’s flag, jersey number, or soccer-inspired patterns. Imagine taking a custom rug of the Canadian maple leaf, Germany’s crest, or your own name in bold colours back home as your souvenir from this trip. Nothing you’d buy in an airport gift shop comes close.
Sessions are beginner-friendly, the studio is TTC-accessible, BYOB-friendly, and full of great energy. Small group sizes (maximum 6 people) mean you actually get proper attention and don’t feel like you’re on a factory floor.
Time needed: 3 to 5 hours. Perfect for: Couples, friend groups, solo travellers, team-building 📍 1315 Lawrence Ave E, Unit 406, North York | Open Thu–Sun 12pm–8pm Book at zuozuostudio.ca
Also at ZuoZuo Studio, and genuinely one of the most fun creative experiences you can have in Toronto right now.
Fluid bear painting involves choosing a bear figurine and pouring, drizzling, and blending fluid acrylic paints across the surface to create a swirling, marble-like pattern that’s unique to you. No two bears ever look the same — the paint flows and mixes in ways you can never fully predict, which means the process is as satisfying to watch as it is to do.
It’s a completely different energy from tufting. Looser. More spontaneous. Great if you want something creative but don’t want to commit to a 4-hour sitting. Many World Cup visitors have used a fluid bear session as a two-hour afternoon activity between a morning match and an evening out.
You also have the option to take home a DIY Fluid Bear kit if you want to do it in your hotel room or bring it back as a gift for someone at home. ZuoZuo stocks home kits for exactly this reason.
Time needed: 1.5 to 2.5 hours Perfect for: Quick creative breaks, date nights, gifts Book at zuozuostudio.ca
Here’s one that surprises people. ZuoZuo Studio also offers a pearl jewellery-making workshop that is genuinely magical — and wildly popular with visitors who want a wearable souvenir.
The experience works like this: you pick a clam, open it yourself, and reveal the pearls inside. Then you work with elegant silver accessories to craft those pearls into a custom necklace, bracelet, or earrings that you can wear the same day.
It sounds simple, but opening the clam and finding your pearl is one of those moments that makes people gasp. Every clam is different. Every pearl is different. And what you create from it is entirely personal.
This is an ideal activity for partners, for groups of friends, or for someone who wants to go home with something beautiful and handmade that has a genuine story behind it. “I made this in Toronto during the World Cup” is a much better story than “I bought this at the airport.”
Time needed: 1.5 to 2 hours. Perfect for: Couples, solo visitors, meaningful souvenirs Book at zuozuostudio.ca
The FIFA Fan Festival™ at Fort York and The Bentway is not just a viewing zone. It’s a 22-day creative festival featuring over 75 local GTA and Ontario artists, interactive art installations, and programming that turns the city’s underused infrastructure into one of the most imaginative public spaces Toronto has ever seen.
Some of the standout creative features: a shipping container that has been converted into a fully functioning recording studio where visitors can lay down their own vocal tracks. A lounge area constructed entirely from soccer balls and netting. Flag installations along The Bentway’s skate trail that literally respond to human touch, changing colour and light as you walk past them.
There’s also a custom soccer mini-pitch featuring the artwork of Indigenous artist Alanah Astehtsi’ Otsistóhkwaˀ Jewel, and the Tkaronto Market featuring Indigenous vendors showcasing handmade goods.
General admission is free but requires advance registration on Ticketmaster. Tickets go on sale May 6 — don’t sleep on this.
Time needed: 2 to 4 hours per visit Perfect for: Everyone, all ages, all budgets Register at torontofwc26.ca
Toronto has one of the most vibrant street art scenes in North America, and the stretch from Queen Street West through Kensington Market into Parkdale is effectively an outdoor gallery that runs for several kilometres.
Queen West’s western edge is wall-to-wall murals — hyper-realistic portraits, abstract explosions of colour, politically charged pieces, and everything in between. Local artists and international muralists have been painting these walls for decades, and new pieces appear constantly.
Kensington Market takes it further. The neighbourhood itself is the art. Vintage storefronts painted with psychedelic patterns, hand-lettered signs, community murals, and street performers who rotate through the tight laneways. On World Cup match days, this neighbourhood comes completely alive — packed streets, music from every direction, and celebrations that spill out of bars and into the road.
Pick up a free street art map from any local café or download the Toronto Street Art app. It’ll route you through the best pieces in a two to three hour walk.
Time needed: 2 to 3 hours Perfect for: Photography lovers, solo wanderers, creatives Best area: Queen West, Kensington Market, Parkdale
This is a World Cup 2026 legacy project that most visitors don’t know about, and it’s genuinely worth going out of your way for.
As part of the FIFA World Cup 2026 infrastructure program, two major underpasses beneath the Gardiner Expressway — at Dan Leckie Way and Bathurst Street — have been completely transformed through the Under Gardiner Lighting Project. Internationally renowned studio Light Bureau designed a gradient of cool-to-warm lighting that highlights the Gardiner’s structure and turns what was once a grim pedestrian route into an immersive light installation.
Walk it at dusk. The shift from cool blue at the entrance to warm amber at the exit creates a genuinely cinematic effect. It connects fans from the transit hubs to the waterfront, but more than that, it’s a reminder of how good public infrastructure can feel when it’s designed with intention.
It’s completely free. It’s open year-round. And it’s the kind of Toronto detail that only people who were here for the World Cup summer will know about.
Time needed: 15 to 30 minutes Perfect for: Evening walks, photography, and architecture lovers Location: Dan Leckie Way and Bathurst Street underpasses
Beyond just looking at street art, you can actually make some. Several Toronto studios and community organisations offer graffiti and urban art workshops during the summer, some of which are specifically programmed around the World Cup festival calendar.
These sessions typically run two to three hours, cover the history and techniques of spray art and marker-based muralism, and give you canvas time to create your own piece under guidance. You don’t need to be artistic. You need to be willing to try.
Look for programming through The Bentway’s cultural calendar, local artist collectives in Kensington Market, and community boards at spots like Stackt Market and The Well. New workshops are being added to the city’s World Cup community event calendar regularly throughout June.
Time needed: 2 to 3 hours. Perfect for: Creative beginners, teens, and groups. Where to look: thebentway.ca, Stackt Market, Toronto community boards
The AGO is one of North America’s great art museums — a Frank Gehry–designed building on Dundas Street West that houses over 120,000 works ranging from European masters to contemporary Indigenous Canadian art. It’s free on Wednesday evenings and always free for visitors aged 25 and under.
But here’s what many visitors miss: the AGO regularly runs drop-in art-making sessions in its public spaces, especially during major cultural moments. During the World Cup period, check the AGO’s event calendar for workshops, creative labs, and community sessions that run alongside their permanent and visiting exhibitions.
Even without a structured session, the AGO’s collection of Canadian art — including works by the Group of Seven and major contemporary Indigenous artists — offers a creative perspective on this country that no stadium can give you.
Time needed: 2 to 4 hours Free on Wednesday evenings | Always free for under 25s 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto | ago.ca
One of the most unexpected creative experiences at the FIFA Fan Festival™ is the shipping container recording studio installed as part of the festival’s interactive art programming.
Visitors can step inside the converted container and record their own vocal track — a chant, a message, a song, or just their voice captured in a proper studio environment. The recordings are folded into the festival’s broader sound installation project, which means your voice could literally become part of the sonic tapestry of Toronto’s World Cup summer.
This is the kind of experience that has no equivalent. There is no other World Cup city doing this. It’s distinctly Toronto — creative, participatory, a little weird in the best way, and completely free with festival entry.
Check the Fan Festival schedule for session availability as spots are limited per day.
Time needed: 30 to 60 minutes Free with festival registration Fort York National Historic Site, 250 Fort York Blvd
If you want a creative experience that slows the whole trip down — that gives you two or three hours of pure focus and quiet satisfaction — a pottery session in the Distillery District is it.
The Distillery District is one of Toronto’s most beautiful neighbourhoods: a Victorian industrial complex turned pedestrian arts and dining village with cobblestone laneways, red brick architecture, and independent galleries and studios tucked into every corner. Several ceramics studios in and around the district offer drop-in and booked wheel-throwing or hand-building sessions throughout the summer.
There’s something about getting your hands into clay after days of standing in crowds, watching matches, and being on high energy that feels genuinely therapeutic. You leave with something you made. The studio finishes and fires it. Some studios will even ship your piece home once it’s done.
It’s the complete opposite of the stadium experience — and for a lot of visitors, it becomes their favourite memory of the whole trip.
Time needed: 2 to 3 hours Perfect for: Couples, solo travellers, de-stressing between match days Where to look: Distillery District studios, Toronto ceramics school listings for summer 2026
There’s a reason that “I did a tufting workshop in Toronto” is a better story than “I bought a Toronto t-shirt at the airport.”
When you make something — when you spend two hours with your hands in clay, or three hours guiding a tufting gun across a canvas, or thirty minutes recording your voice into a container that becomes part of a city’s creative memory — you’re not just passing time between matches. You’re actually experiencing the place.
Toronto during World Cup 2026 is a once-in-a-generation moment for this city. The matches are the reason you’re here. But the creative experiences are the reason you’ll remember it.
Book the workshop. Make the rug. Open the clam. Record the song. Come home with a story.
ZuoZuo Studio offers rug tufting, fluid bear painting, pearl jewelry making, and DIY home kits at 1315 Lawrence Ave E, Unit 406, North York, Toronto. Open Thursday to Sunday, 12pm to 8pm. All sessions are beginner-friendly and fully guided. Book your spot before the World Cup rush at zuozuostudio.ca or call 226-348-4177.
1315 Lawrence Ave E,unit 406, M3A 3R3, North York, Ontario
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