Rejoice, soccer fans — or honestly, anyone who loves a good party. FIFA is officially on its way, and the city is turning into one giant soccer playground. But for those of us who couldn’t snag match tickets — or just want somewhere fun to catch games happening in other cities — there are plenty of FIFA watch parties and activations popping up across Toronto. From hotel viewing lounges to bars blasting the sound, there’s a spot for every kind of fan.

1 Hotel Toronto, 550 Wellington Street West

Who says the celebrations can’t continue when the games are done? Harriet’s, the restaurant at 1 Hotel’s rooftop, partnered with tequila brand Casamigos to keep the spirits high all summer long. On game days, they’ll have six jumbo screens, food and drink specials and a huge party vibe. And when FIFA’s done, that vibe will continue all summer long with live DJs and a new Casamigos margarita menu. There’s also an onsite collaboration with Offside Boys, a brand that reworks vintage soccer jerseys into one-of-a-kind tote bags and bucket hats.

Blue Bovine, 65 Front Street West

There’s no more convenient location than literally inside Union Station, and Blue Bovine’s watch parties have that secured. The restaurant will be showing every FIFA game, with sound, on its 12 giant televisions, and there will be food and drink specials to mark the occasion.

Cabana Pool Bar, 11 Polson Street

The recent fire isn’t stopping Cabana from celebrating the summer in style. There will be a huge FIFA finals party on July 19, with all of the energy you can expect from the city’s iconic pool bar. They’ll also be playing games on the weekends, too, if you’re more of a casual fan.

Chotto Matte, 161 Bay Street

If patio vibes are what you’re looking for, Chotto Matte has you covered. There will be live DJ sets for every FIFA kickoff, the Nikkei cuisine that’s made Chotto Matte so famous, and crafted cocktails for the occasion. What could be better than a soccer game with a view of the city?

The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West

The Drake Hotel’s in-house venues (Lounge, Sky Yard, and Cafe Patio) will host indoor and outdoor watch parties for all FIFA games, but there’s also a package for those looking to stay at the hotel. The in-room minibar is complimentary, and guests who opt for the package receive two custom limited-edition soccer t-shirts from local screen-printing studio WQW. 

FYE Ultraclub x E11even, 15 Saskatchewan Road

 

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One of Miami’s most famous clubs is popping up in Toronto to celebrate FIFA as part of its multi-city “Where the World Comes to Play” initiative. The residency will feature live performances, themed entertainment, special guest appearances, and after-hours events tied to key tournament moments, and will run on key tournament dates throughout June and early July. 

Four Seasons Hotel Toronto, 60 Yorkville Avenue

d|bar is unveiling two new cocktails for the FIFA season, the La Verde (Don Julio 1942 with fresh cucumber, lime, coconut water, and soda) and the 42 Passion (Don Julio with guava, passionfruit, and citrus). There are also three giant TVs and a seasonal menu for those looking for elevated bar bites on game day. 

King & Bay, 161 Bay Street

For something completely different, bespoke tailor King & Bay is offering watch parties inside their stunning rooftop space. The FIFA package is priced at $7,000 and includes signature cocktails, standard beverages and food catered by Chotto Matte for 20 guests for a sort of members-only club feel.

Petty Cash, 487 Adelaide Street West

For elevated pub shareables, a relaxed environment and sound on for all FIFA games (regardless of the time), Petty Cash is the place to be. The new menu is chock full of pizza, wings and other favourites with one-of-a-kind twists, and the party is sure to keep going when the game is over.

The Ritz Carlton, 181 Wellington Street West

The Ritz is offering a private game-day suite, which boasts a large TV, a custom food and drink menu and service throughout the game. It’s like going to a box without the lineup, basically. For those looking for a little less of a splurge, EPOCH Bar and Kitchen Terrace, TOCA Restaurant, and LANO will feature FIFA‑inspired menus and elevated sharable plates, too.

Silent H, 461 King Street West

The hours at this Mexican spot will be extended for every major matchup, and the happy hour specials, which include $10 margaritas and $4 bites, will be in effect for all primetime FIFA games. To watch, there will also be multiple projector screens with sound on both patios.

Talk shows usually involve a fancy studio, celebrities dressed up in their best formal wear and a set of pre-approved, easy questions. To no one’s surprise, when Tom Green decided to start his own talk show, he wanted to do it a little differently. On The Tom Green Farm, the new Crave talk show premiering on May 29, Green is taking his star-studded lineup of guests out of the big city and onto his farm in rural Ontario. Riding horses, baling hay, chasing chickens — all of it is fair game for guests like Tony Hawk, Michael Cera, Chantal Kreviazuk, Priyanka and George Stroumboulopoulos. We chatted with Green about his new venture and what he and his guests learned along the way. 

What interested you in hosting this talk show on your farm?

I like to show off the beauty of Canada, and it does really lend itself to a good interview too, because our guests have to kind of make a bit of an effort to come to the show. And when they get there, we’re experiencing something that a lot of people haven’t experienced before — we ride on a horse or go out in a canoe and are around a working farm in the barn. I think that helps people open up and have a good time.

What was the most unexpected part of filming this show?

The first episode, we built a giant skateboarding ramp for Tony Hawk, who is a friend of mine. I never really imagined he would come all the way to Canada to farm, and we would build an entire ramp! In future shows, we’re definitely going to have more athletes and skateboarders on.

I also got married this year to my wife Amanda, and she’s Canadian — she’s on the show, as is my father, and my mother was a producer on the show and appears on camera. There’s a lot of funny interactions between her and I; I used to do a lot of pranks on her, and now we’re working together in a professional way! So that was kind of surprising and fun, too.

Last time we spoke, you referred to this farm as a new chapter in your life. Does it still feel that way or does being on the farm now feel commonplace? 

We’ve been at the farm for five years now in July, which goes by real fast. So some days, I’ll be out there working in the barn, and it just feels like I know what I’m doing, and this is just what I do. And other days I’ll sort of go, “What the hell, how did this happen?” But it’s the best decision I ever made, to move home.

How did you approach the actual talk show element in such an unconventional setting? 

I like the conversation to unfold somewhat naturally. I think people are kind of relieved to be out in the country and out in nature, so I’d take them on a tour of the property, and that is somewhat calming for everybody. We would go and jump on the ATV and go for a drive through the woods, and everybody gets to kind of relax and exhale.

I think sometimes, when I’ve hosted talk shows before, you would get a guest who wasn’t very nice because they’re on some sort of press junket, and they’re just getting dropped off, interview after interview, and they’re tired or hungover, and they are sort of a jerk. But that doesn’t happen when they have to drive, you know, three hours out of their way or come in from another country. The people who did the show, they really wanted to be there.

So lesson learned: film every talk show on a farm.

Yes, exactly.

Which of your guests took to farm life the fastest?

Priyanka was pretty good at driving that old 1964 tractor, that was pretty cool! We were baling some hay with Paul Bissonnette, he’s a hockey legend and hilarious guy, so we were doing some real farm work with him. But it’s not the kind of show where we run the celebrity through the paces on the farm and see if they drop dead or whatever. It’s really just more being there and enjoying the Canadian wilderness as well.

Who were your favourite guests? 

I didn’t really have a favourite! I was a huge fan of Dan Aykroyd and Tony Hawk, and I was thrilled that they came. I played music with Kurt Vile, who I’m a big fan of, and I’d never met him before; we got to play country music together and we were just jamming together in the barn. There was a Sasquatch sighting with Michael Cera, which was scary — we were really lucky it didn’t turn out worse than it did.

Summer is here (unofficially) in Toronto, and when the sun is out, everyone is out! There are so many ways to fill up your days with fun this weekend. From Bruno Mars and the Toronto Tempo to a giant yard sale, these are the best things to do in Toronto this weekend.

A$AP Rocky at Scotiabank Arena

On Sunday, A$AP Rocky brings his’ Don’t Be Dumb’ World Tour to Scotiabank Arena. Expect a high-energy night of hits, hype and headline-level production as one of hip hop’s most unpredictable and enjoyable live performers hits the stage.

The Guess Who at Scotiabank Arena

It’s a reunion tour! Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings announced they’ll be touring as Canadian rock band The Guess Who for the first time since 2003. Expect hits including “American Woman,” “These Eyes,” and “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon” when the take the stage on Saturday!

Fashion Art Toronto Spring/Summer Show

This week, Toronto transformed into a full fashion destination. Fashion Art Toronto is back with its spring/summer show, and it’s a full seven days of runway shows at five different locations across the city, including the final two days this weekend. There will also be parties, a shopping showroom filled with Canadian designers and more!

Top Gun: Maverick in Concert

Relive Academy Award-winning film Top Gun: Maverick in Concert on Friday and Saturday — with a twist. Follow along as Tom Cruise embarks on a specialized mission while TO Live Orchestra performs the lively score by Hans Zimmer, Lady Gaga and more live to picture.

Bruno Mars at Scotiabank Arena

Bruno Mars returned to Toronto for the first time in almost a decade on his headline tour this week — and this Saturday and Sunday are your last chances to see him! Despite some issues with that pesky Rogers Stadium (good luck leaving the concert in a timely fashion!), the show must go on! Expect to hear hits from his latest album release, The Romantic.

Tiger Bride at Soulpepper Theatre

The world premiere of Tiger Bride is happening on Friday, transforming Soulpepper into a rock-fuelled, punk-infused reimagining of Angela Carter’s dark fairy tale. It stars Toronto’s Hailey Gillis in a show that blurs theatre, cabaret and concert.

Bike for Brain Health

On Sunday, Canada’s largest one-day cycling event is taking over Toronto! The Bike for Brain Health helps raise money for Baycrest, Canada’s global leader in dementia research. With three routes available (30 km, 60 arm and 90 km), go on a long bike ride across the city for a good cause!

Giant Junction Jumble Sale

Spend your Saturday shopping around at the largest yard sale in the city! This neighbourhood-wide jumble sale is taking place in the Junction this weekend after it got rained out last weekend, with dozens of houses participating in clearing out some gems that need to find a new home — and it could be yours!

Toronto Tempo vs. Seattle Storm

The WNBA regular season is underway, and the Toronto Tempo are off with a bang! Coming off the heels of an away game win against the Chicago Sky, they’ll be facing off against the Seattle Storm at home on Saturday — so you can cheer them on from the stands!

For more events happening this month, click here. 

Hailey Gillis has been quietly refining a potent blend of music, storytelling, and raw theatricality for years. With Tiger Bride, that potent theatrical cocktail may have finally reached its most intoxicating form yet.

Part gothic fairytale, part punk-rock concert, and part intimate theatrical experience, Tiger Bride arrives at Soulpepper Theatre on May 29 as one of the company’s boldest and most unconventional premieres in recent memory.

And it all started years ago, when Gillis, then a young theatre student, read the short story “The Tiger’s Bride” by Angela Carter. It is a radical feminist reimagining of Beauty and the Beast and when she read it, Gillis says she could already hear the music in her head.

“This story got me right away. The writing is very gothic, but it’s also very sexy and evocative of a certain kind of world. Angela Carter writes these beautiful, luxurious sentences about everything you can imagine. It felt very rich,” she says, during our interview at Soulpepper in the Distillery District. 

“I just kept carrying that book with me, and I always knew it might have music involved in it. The words were so evocative — I could hear this soundscape immediately.”

The production transforms the haunting source material into an electrifying musical experience that fuses live performance, cabaret, and raw storytelling into something visceral and entirely its own.

Gillis grew up in the Hamilton area to musical parents — a fidgety kid who couldn’t stand still in a row long enough to make choir work. But she found theatre, and everything changed.

She moved to Toronto for theatre school, and arrived at the Soulpepper Academy where her world changed. Her mentors were generous and she blossomed into one of the city’s great stage performers whether musical or drama or anything in-between.

When Gillis was ready to tackle Carter’s powerful work, she enlisted her long-time collaborators Frank Cox-O’Connell and Andrew Penner. The trio have been crafting some seriously unique and spectacular theatre together since meeting up at the Soulpepper Academy so many years ago. 

It is a group that draws attention, and has earned a reputation for crafting special works.

“When I heard them play and sing and write, I thought: ‘Oh, that’s what it sounded like.’ I bought them both a copy of the story and said, ‘Read this. We have to make this.’” Gillis says. 

 

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And, like true alchemists of creativity, they squirrelled themselves away in a room designed to foster creativity with a bushel of “weird instruments,” and got to work.

What happened was, well, unique. special.

“We came into the theatre with a bunch of instruments — weird instruments too — old beat machines, strange synths, retro keyboards. We didn’t really know what we were going to do. Then we just wrote for three days, and it poured out of us,” Gillis says.

“It was wild how much we wrote in those three days. We all somehow heard the same thing.”

It is a work — much like the works this particular group has crafted in the past years that might have begun back with Spoon River at Soulpepper and other projects like The Ghost Quartet and The Shape of Home: Songs in Search of Al Purdy — that resists easy categorization. It is moody and atmosphere, a stew where everything sight and sound plays a role alongside the actors and musicians on stage.

Built around 16 original songs performed live by the cast, Tiger Bride unfolds less like a traditional musical and more like a fever dream scored by distorted guitars, pulsing rhythms, and aching ballads. The production embraces contradiction. But at its centre is a woman pulled into a strange world of desire, power, fear, and transformation — one where the boundaries between girl and woman, human and animal, are constantly dissolving.

“We’re trying to find this interesting middle world that’s not musical theatre, not just theatre, and not just music. It’s more like a concept album put on its feet,” Gillis explains.

“Music has this amazing ability to give access to inner thoughts and desires in a way text alone sometimes can’t. There’s something about music that creeps behind the thinking brain for an audience. It’s that moment where you suddenly get shivers and don’t even know why.”

It could be the closest Gillis and company have come to finding their formula.

“We’ve been chipping away at this style together for years — trying to figure out what our unique storytelling language is,” she explains. 

Toronto’s west end is getting a new independent music festival this fall, and it is bringing some seriously talented performers to celebrate its inaugural edition including cleopatrick, and local indie collective Cookie Catcher.

Second Summer Festival, a new multi-venue event focused on emerging and alternative music, will make its debut Sept. 24 to 26 with more than 110 artists performing across 13 venues stretching from Spadina Avenue to Lansdowne Avenue, between Bloor Street and Queen Street West.

Organizers say the festival is designed to recapture the thrill of musical discovery at a time when streaming algorithms increasingly shape listening habits.

“Second Summer is about soul, community and putting independent talent front and centre,” organizers said in a release announcing the inaugural edition. “A festival where audiences walk away knowing that they will inevitably one day say: ‘I can’t believe I saw them in that tiny room.’”

The first wave of performers includes headliners cleopatrick, EKKSTACY, Militarie Gun, MIKE, High Vis, Folk Bitch Trio, Adrian Younge, DEADLETTER and legendary Zambian rock band W.I.T.C.H. Australian punk outfit Dune Rats will also take part in a festival residency.

The lineup leans heavily into indie rock, punk, experimental and underground scenes, with additional performances from artists including Kiwi Jr., Tallies, Softcult, Cartel Madras, Twin Shadow, Rachel Bobbitt and Graham Wright of Tokyo Police Club.

Festival performances will take place in some of the Toronto’s most beloved live music spaces, including Lee’s Palace, Horseshoe Tavern, Sneaky Dee’s, The Garrison, The Great Hall, Drake Underground and the Bovine Sex Club. Adding an element of support for these venues where new and emerging artists can perform. 

The festival was founded by Toronto artist managers Brendan McCarney and Claire Rosenbaum.

“Our goal is a lineup that represents local and global talent that’s on the tip of people’s radar now,” McCarney said. “All of this with a backdrop of Toronto’s vibrant west end, rich with the best venues, restaurants, bars, cafes and shops.”

In addition to live performances, Second Summer Festival will host a boutique music conference for emerging industry professionals and established leaders at the Drake Hotel on Sept. 24 and 25.

Second Summer Festival pre-sale tickets become available May 28 at 10 a.m., with general ticket sales launching May 29.

One of Toronto’s biggest summer art tradition is set to return this summer to celebrate 65 years by honouring and celebrating artists.

The Toronto Outdoor Art Fair (TOAF) is Canada’s largest and longest-running juried contemporary outdoor art fair. It is returning to Nathan Phillips Square July 10–12 with what organizers are calling its most ambitious edition yet. This year’s epic event is set to feature more than 400 artists from across the country, expanded accessibility initiatives, national showcases and a new artist-support campaign.

“Toronto Outdoor Art Fair has always been about creating meaningful connections between artists and the public,” says anahita azrahimi, executive and creative director of TOAF. “As we celebrate 65 years, we’re not only reflecting on our legacy, we’re investing in the future of Canadian artists through expanded access, national representation, and new ways for audiences to discover and collect art.”

For three days, the square in front of City Hall will once again transform into an open-air gallery expected to attract roughly 170,000 visitors. The free public event will feature painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, jewellery, textiles, digital media and mixed-media works from artists ranging from emerging creators to established names.

This year’s edition includes more than 350 artists exhibiting in person and another 65 participating online through TOAF.ca, and organizers say that 122 artists are participating in the fair for the first time.

The fair is working towards doing something more to help local artists who are having to navigate rising costs and an increasingly competitive world. TOAF is introducing a new campaign called “$65 for 65 Years,” designed to circulate support directly within the artist community.

How it works is that every participating TOAF65 artist will receive a $65 gift card to purchase artwork from another artist at the fair. Visitors will also be invited to contribute through $65 donations to help fund additional artist gift cards.

Among the new additions is a Spotlight on Emily Carr University of Art + Design, showcasing emerging artists from the Vancouver-based institution’s undergraduate and graduate fine arts programs.

There is also an Atlantic Canada showcase, The Land and the Sea Bind Us, curated by Bushra Junaid. And, Unique Québec — presented in partnership with the Bureau du Québec à Toronto — will feature 29 Québec-based artists across online and in-person presentations.

The fair’s 65th anniversary programming also extends beyond visual art.

A free public birthday party is scheduled for Saturday evening at Nathan Phillips Square, complete with live entertainment and celebrations marking the fair’s six-and-a-half decades in the city.

TOAF65 will also debut Les Montagnes, a new contemporary dance commission by Montréal-based choreographer and visual artist Marie Lambin-Gagnon. 

At Nathan Phillips Square, the latest edition of Art Nest — titled A FORWARD RETREAT — will bring together established Canadian artists including Peggy Baker, Max Dean, Naomi Dodds, Micah Lexier and Ed Pien in a project examining artistic longevity and reinvention.

Over 65 years, the fair has become one of the country’s most visible launchpads for emerging Canadian artists — a place where careers begin, audiences grow and conversations around contemporary art become accessible to the public outside traditional gallery walls.

This summer’s anniversary edition appears determined to preserve that spirit while expanding who gets to participate — both as artists and as collectors.