BC Lions build temporary 18,500-seat home stadium in Kelowna | Daily Hive

BC Lions game on June 27, 2026, using the temporarily expanded Apple Bowl stadium in Kelowna. (BC Lions)

With Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium unavailable due to the FIFA World Cup, the BC Lions have taken their game on the road — and in Kelowna. That has meant temporarily transforming the city’s Apple Bowl into a much larger venue for football.

The outdoor stadium, normally a community sports facility, has been temporarily expanded with major seating installations to host two BC Lions’ “Touchdown Kelowna” games this summer, coinciding with the team’s start to the CFL regular season.

Upon inquiry, the City of Kelowna told Daily Hive Urbanized the work has boosted the Apple Bowl’s capacity to about 18,500 spectators, creating a rare professional football game-day setting in the Okanagan.

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This venue is specifically being used for the BC Lions’ home matches of Saturday, June 27 — which saw the Calgary Stampeders win 41-33 — and today, Saturday, July 4, with the Lions playing against the Edmonton Elks starting at 4 p.m.

Photos of the venue provided to Daily Hive Urbanized show large temporary grandstands built around much of the field, bringing fans close to the action and giving the Apple Bowl a far larger stadium feel. The setup includes expanded sideline seating, end-zone viewing areas, hospitality and event tents, broadcast and operations areas, and other temporary infrastructure needed for a CFL game.

Location of Apple Bowl stadium in Kelowna. (Google Maps)

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June 2026 work for the temporary expansion of Kelowna’s Apple Bowl stadium for the BC Lions. (City of Kelowna)

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BC Lions game on June 27, 2026, using the temporarily expanded Apple Bowl stadium in Kelowna. (BC Lions)

“This expansion allows thousands more fans to attend and experience a national-level sporting event in Kelowna,” Doug Nicholas, the sport and event services manager for the City of Kelowna, told Daily Hive Urbanized.

The move comes as the BC Lions’ usual home, BC Place Stadium in Downtown Vancouver, is tied up with hosting the FIFA World Cup. This has required both the Lions and Vancouver Whitecaps FC to shift their home games elsewhere.

For Kelowna, the result is one of the biggest temporary sports builds the city has seen. The setup process began weeks before the first match.

The 1995-built Apple Bowl has a permanent capacity of about 2,300 spectators, entailing a permanent covered grandstand with over 1,000 seats and aluminum bleachers with 1,200. In the past, the venue held events with an attendance of as much as over 6,000 people.

The temporary grandstands for the BC Lions were largely built over the venue’s running track, including one large east grandstand that temporarily replaced the aluminum bleachers and two large end zone grandstands. Photo and video footage also showed extensive standing areas on the west side next to the permanent grandstand.

Ontario-based Tower Scaffoled and Events provided and installed the temporary grandstands, which were last used for Montreal’s Formula One Grand Prix in late May.

In addition to seating, to meet CFL standards, the upgrades included field realignment and turf preparation — realigning the venue’s track-and-field layout — for football, as well as the relocation of the scoreboard, installation of two temporary large video screens, adjustments to fencing, and other temporary changes that enable the venue to handle an exponentially larger crowd than it normally hosts. About 180 portable washroom stalls were also deployed.

apple bowl stadium kelowna temporary expansion bc lions summer 2026

BC Lions game on June 27, 2026, using the temporarily expanded Apple Bowl stadium in Kelowna. (BC Lions)

Once the BC Lions’ games are complete, the additional seating and event-specific infrastructure will be removed, allowing the Apple Bowl to return to its regular role as a community athletics and sports venue.

The first Touchdown Kelowna game has already given the BC Lions a strong test run for the temporary venue, with a packed and energetic crowd shown across the expanded stands.

Matt Baker, a spokesperson for the BC Lions, said the first game delivered on the team’s vision for bringing a larger-scale CFL experience to the Okanagan.

“The first Touchdown Kelowna game was a great success, with enthusiasm evident from the time the gates opened at 1 p.m. to the final whistle over six hours later. It takes true dedication up and down the entire organization to build a CFL-sized venue from scratch,” Baker told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“It’s a credit to our owner Amar Doman and the vision of the whole franchise to create something special for our great fans in Kelowna and the surrounding areas.”

Baker added that the team is looking for an even better turnout for the match later today, which will end the brief Touchdown Kelowna run. The official attendance for the first match last week was 19,108.

The expanded Apple Bowl setup also brings the CFL into a more intimate outdoor environment than the BC Lions’ partial capacity use of BC Place Stadium, framed by Kelowna’s surrounding hills and mountains and the Okanagan scenery.

BC Lions game on June 27, 2026, using the temporarily expanded Apple Bowl stadium in Kelowna. (BC Lions)

The Kelowna games are not simply a workaround for BC Place Stadium’s temporary unavailability. They also gave the BC Lions a major opportunity to strengthen its reach beyond the Lower Mainland and tap into its wider B.C. fan base., with Touchdown Kelowna also featuring extensive programming off the field, such as outdoor concerts, FIFA World Cup live match screenings, and other festive activities.

The provincial government contributed $1 million toward the temporary venue improvements and programming that support expanded access and fan experience, including additional seating.

This is not the first time the BC Lions have played at a temporary facility due to BC Place Stadium’s unavailability. To accommodate BC Place Stadium’s drastic renovation a decade and a half ago, the provincial government funded the temporary Empire Field stadium at the former site of Empire Stadium at Vancouver’s Hastings Park. It remained in place for about 18 months and had a capacity for about 28,000 spectators, with this temporary PNE stadium used for all Lions home games in 2010 and a portion of the 2011 schedule. Vancouver Whitecaps FC also played a portion of their inaugural season in the MLS in 2011 at Empire Field.

BC Place Stadium’s seventh and final FIFA World Cup match is scheduled for Tuesday, July 7, with Colombia playing against Switzerland in a Round of 16 match. After this match, well before the tournament officially ends on Sunday, July 19 with the championship final, work will begin on removing the temporary fixtures and installations at BC Place Stadium, including the removal of the natural grass pitch and the installation of a new replacement artificial turf.

The BC Lions will return to BC Place Stadium on Saturday, July 25, playing against the Toronto Argonauts.

The first Vancouver Whitecaps FC match at BC Place Stadium since late April will be Saturday, Aug. 1, against Los Angeles FC. The stadium’s FIFA World Cup preparation work began the day after the last Whitecaps match this past spring.

Vancouver Whitecaps FC have been on the road since then, but they will be very close to home on Wednesday, July 8, when they return to Burnaby’s Swangard Stadium for the first time since the team’s MLS era began a decade and a half ago. They will be playing against Calgary’s Cavalry FC of the Canadian Premier League, for the first leg of the TELUS Canadian Championship quarterfinals. Unlike the Lions’ major temporary capacity expansion of the Kelowna venue, Swangard Stadium will be used as is, with a capacity of about 5,300 seats.

The temporary 27,500-seat Empire Field stadium at Hastings Park in Vancouver, as seen in June 2011. (Anne-Marie Sorvin/USA TODAY Sports)

Vancouver Whitecaps FC defeated Toronto FC at the temporary Empire Field stadium in their inaugural MLS match on March 19, 2011. (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)

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Vancouver Whitecaps FC at the 2010/2011 temporary Empire Field stadium at Hastings Park. (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)

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Vancouver Whitecaps FC at the 2010/2011 temporary Empire Field stadium at Hastings Park. (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)

Vancouver Whitecaps FC defeated Toronto FC at the temporary Empire Field stadium in their inaugural MLS match on March 19, 2011. (Vancouver Whitecaps FC)

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