As the city of Toronto gears up for another year of street festivals, organizers say rising costs are putting increasing pressure on festival budgets.
“We could always use more. It is really hard,” said Anah Shabbar, managing director of Do West Fest. “We are one of the biggest festivals, but we do have one of the smaller budgets.”
Shabbar says several services required to run the festival have become more expensive this year, with increased demand driven in part by preparations for the upcoming FIFA World Cup.
“These general supplier things always go up a little bit year to year,” she said. “We’re lucky that we do have some good relationships with some of those suppliers over the years and they’ve helped us out, but others have gone up a bit.”
Safety and security costs are also taking a larger share of the festival’s budget.
“We did have a lot of people, almost a million people at the festival last year.” Shabbar said. “We’ve had to have more police on site this year, which is almost doubled our police spending line.”
The increased focus on safety comes after the 2025 tragedy at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu Day festival, where 11 people were killed after a driver drove into a crowd. Since then, many festivals are now required to implement additional security measures, including hostile vehicle mitigation units.
Shabbar says bright-coloured barricades at the entrances of Do West Fest were used this year.
“We started using those last year and that’s been a huge increase,” she explained.
Smaller events are also facing similar financial challenges.
Organizers with Taste of North York say many community festivals are competing for limited funding.
“We don’t want to get to the point where we need to be bailed out,” said Sebastian Biasucci, Marketing and Event Manager for Neighbourlink North York. “There are so many of us fighting for very little city funding. I know the city wants to help as many people as they can, but there just aren’t the resources.”
In April, Toronto approved its first citywide festival strategy, aimed at streamlining how organizers access municipal funding and support.
Mayor Olivia Chow said the city has increased funding to help festivals manage rising costs.
“We have increased the budget by millions,” Chow said.
The Ontario government announced in April that it would invest over $20 million to support nearly 400 festivals and events across the province in 2026.
Local event organizers say they hope they’ll have access to this cash in the years ahead.
“Our hope and our prayer is that we can keep going because we want to do it but it is very costly,” Biasucci said.
