Canadians Willing to Leave Jobs — Temporarily — to Work the FIFA World Cup
As Canada prepares to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, new research from Employment Hero, an AI-powered employment platform, points to an underappreciated dimension of how Canadians are thinking about the event: not just as spectators, but as workers willing to restructure their professional lives around it.
Fourteen percent of Canadians say they would likely consider taking on temporary or gig work tied to a major event such as the FIFA World Cup. Among that group, the willingness to make real trade-offs is notable. Two in three say they would consider taking time off from their primary job to participate in a temporary role. Twenty-eight percent would take unpaid leave to do so, while 38% would use paid vacation time.
The breakdown of work arrangements reflects a workforce navigating the tension between financial stability and experiential pull. Six in ten among those open to FIFA-related gig work say they would treat it as a side gig alongside their existing job. But 11% say they would temporarily replace their primary job entirely — a meaningful segment willing to step fully out of their regular employment for the duration.
Motivations are split between aspiration and necessity. Thirty-five percent cite the appeal of a once-in-a-lifetime experience as their primary driver, while 25% say they need the extra income to cover everyday living expenses. The two forces are not mutually exclusive, and the data suggest Canada’s event-driven gig opportunity sits at their intersection.
The findings arrive as Canada heads into a concentrated period of major events. The FIFA World Cup is the headline, but the Calgary Stampede and other national gatherings compound the scale of the moment. Employment Hero’s Canadian CEO KJ Lee framed the unpaid leave figure as the most telling data point — a willingness to absorb a financial cost in order to participate in something perceived as historically significant.
For employers, the research surfaces a planning question. If a non-trivial portion of the workforce is actively considering time away from primary employment — including unpaid departures — organizations without visibility into workforce capacity and leave concentration may find themselves caught short. The argument Employment Hero advances is that proactive scheduling and flexible leave frameworks are better positioned to retain staff goodwill than reactive approvals, particularly when employee interest in these opportunities is driven by values — experience, participation, cultural significance — that rigid policies tend to frustrate.
The broader pattern the research describes is one of accelerating integration between work and experience. The traditional model assumed a clean separation: employment is where you earn, events are where you spend. The FIFA data suggests a growing segment of the Canadian workforce no longer operates on that assumption.