Montréal’s sports teams and major sporting events score big in 2025
Sports Festivals and events
Montrealers are legendarily passionate sports fans, and love for the city’s sports teams and major competitive events — the Canadiens, Montréal Victoire, Alouettes, CF Montréal, Montréal Roses, the Grand Prix du Canada and more — is DNA-deep in the identity of the city’s inhabitants. With a history that includes hosting the Olympics, Montréal is one of the world’s great sports cities, holding approximately 60 major sporting events during an average year. Let the following be your guide to Montréal’s top-tier sports teams and many of the exhilarating sports events scheduled for 2025.
CF Montréal
Soccer: Alive and kicking in MTL
When it comes to soccer in Montréal, big change has been afoot with the sport’s rapid ascendance in popularity in the city. Montréal’s professional Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise, CF Montréal, has captured the hearts and minds of locals, and games are a boisterous affair. The club plays its home games in the super-fan-friendly Stade Saputo in the Olympic Park, built on the former track and field practice site of the 1976 Summer Olympic Games, with the soccer stadium’s west side having a close-up view of the Olympic Stadium’s majestic inclined tower, the tallest inclined tower in the world.
Women’s soccer is in full bloom in la belle ville with the 2024 founding of the Montréal Roses. Representing the city in the Northern Super League, the club embodies creativity, passion and Montreal’s diversity through its name, logo and colours. The Roses play their home matches at Centre Sportif Bois-de-Boulogne, a top-of-the-line venue that embodies the essence of the team and which is Canada’s first stadium designed specifically to meet the needs of a professional women’s soccer team.
Noteworthy: Canada’s world-renowned women’s national soccer team will play a friendly against Haiti on June 3 at Stade Saputo.
Montréal Canadiens
Hockey: The puck drops here
Montréal is hockey, and when the city’s professional, NHL hockey team the Montréal Canadiens (known as the “Habs” to the team’s faithful) are playing at home, there is a palpable energy that can be felt throughout the city when the 24-time Stanley Cup champions take to the ice. And if hockey is a religion in Montréal, then the Bell Centre is its temple, boasting the most electric atmosphere in the NHL.
The Montréal Victoire is one of the founding teams of the fledgling Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), which showcases the best women’s ice hockey players in the world. Victoire home games at Place Bell in Laval (easily accessible by metro from downtown Montréal) are action-packed, highly enthusiastic, family friendly affairs that see thousands and thousands of hockey fans not being shy about their love for the team.
Noteworthy: The new NHL 4 Nations Face-Off tournament premiered in Montréal in February and blew the roof off the Bell Centre. It featured all-star NHL players from four of the top hockey-crazy nations on the planet — Canada, Sweden, Finland and the United States — dazzling fans, providing an extraordinary chance for fans to see generational players like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid share the ice together as teammates on Team Canada.
Montreal Alouettes
Football: The gridiron on the mountain
Montrealers love their pigskin, and anticipation always runs high for the season start of our Canadian Football League (CFL) Montréal Alouettes (or “Als,” as they are affectionately known). Home field Percival-Molson Stadium, a diamond set on the southern slope of Mount Royal overlooking downtown Montréal, provides for a dramatic setting complete with scenic views of the city.
Noteworthy: After losing in a tight game to the Toronto Argonauts in the CFL Eastern Conference finals last year, the Alouettes will open their season this year against the rival Argonauts on June 6.
Montréal Alliance
Basketball: Hoop dreams come true
The Montréal Alliance is the ninth franchise to be added to the Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL), Canada’s first true coast-to-coast national professional basketball league. The team’s name, Alliance, was chosen to reflect Montréal’s vibrant and dynamic mosaic of municipalities and communities that together are an alliance that make Montréal one of the world’s great metropolitan cities.
Noteworthy: The CEBL expanded its regular season to a 24-game format in 2025 from a 20-game format, increasing from 100 to 120 total regular season games. Additionally, the season will start approximately one week earlier in early-May and end two weeks later in late August.
Montrealers' love for the city’s sports teams and major competitive events is DNA-deep in the identity of the city’s inhabitants.
Major sporting events to have on your radar
Get your heart racing
The Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada roars back into Montréal’s Parc Jean-Drapeau on June 13-15, bringing with it a high-octane programme of activities and events both on and off the track. Tens of thousands of elite racing fans converge on the city for the 70-lap competition covering the 4,361-metre length of the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, named in honour of the iconic Québec race driver and winner of Montréal’s first Grand Prix in 1978. Fans can also watch the F1 Academy race (featuring the world’s top women drivers) as well as the Ferrari, Porsche and Formula 1600 Challenges, tour the support paddocks and enjoy a number of thematic zones.
Game of boats
The sixth Pan American Club Crew Dragon Boat Championships — hosted by 22Dragons and H2oplayground, two of the world’s most prolific dragon boat clubs — will be held July 4-6 at the Olympic Basin in Montréal, a world-renowned venue that hosted the canoeing and rowing events at the 1976 Summer Olympics. The Olympic Basin, nestled within Parc Jean-Drapeau, offers a 2,000-metre race course with six lanes located just 15 minutes from the city’s downtown.
Satisfy your need for speed
Steeped in history, and powered by pure speed, the annual Valleyfield Regatta will celebrate its 85th edition (!) this year with ten days of thrill-filled hydroplane racing, July 4-13. Competing at speeds of up to 225 km/hr, this major international event draws upwards of 130,000 spectators each year to the picturesque city of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield (the regatta takes place in Baie St-François, adjacent to the city’s downtown), located immediately southwest of the island of Montréal.
Female tennis aces to hold court
The very best in women’s tennis return to lay down the law at the prestigious National Bank Open presented by Rogers tournament, one of the most-anticipated events on the city’s professional sports calendar. Occurring simultaneously in Montréal and Toronto, with the best men’s and women’s players in the world playing at the same time, it’s one of the most anticipated events on the city’s professional sports calendar (attendance in the past has topped 200,000). This year, the women’s tournament comes to IGA Stadium in Montréal, July 26 to August 7.
The WWE throws it down in town
And whether you call it pro sports or pro theatre, we can all agree to call it crazy fun when professional wrestling rolls into Montréal (a city with a long and loving relationship with rasslin’). The WWE Friday Night Smackdown thunders back into the Bell Centre on August 8.
Life’s a beach
The world’s top beach volleyball athletes will touch down in Montréal to spike five days of high-intensity action at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour, August 13-17. Parc Jean-Drapeau will become the epicentre of the sport, hosting explosive matches with the world’s best competitors, high-energy DJ sets, delicious food options and lively entertainment.
Get in on the action
Named for the mythical part jackrabbit/part antelope creature of lore, JACKALOPE — Canada’s largest action sports festival — is an adrenaline junkie’s dream. A wide variety of world-class competitions and demonstrations (skateboarding, bouldering, fixed gear racing, BASE jumping and more), exhilarating activities, food trucks and live music will thrill audiences and participants alike at the Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port, September 12-14.
Cycling’s best take the Mount Royal test
Once a year, for over five muscle-burning, perspiration-pouring hours, elite cyclists from around the world — competitors in the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, Summer Olympics and the like – bring peak athletic performance to, fittingly, the peaks of Mount Royal for the annual Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, taking place this year on September 14. It features the best of the best of pro cyclists on a challenging circuit, and is one of only two Union cycliste internationale (UCI) world tour events in North America.
On your marks!
The Marathon Beneva de Montréal, September 19-21, is for both elite runners and recreational runners who are simply chasing the endorphins of participation. Each year, the marathon attracts thousands upon thousands of competitors for its 42.2 km, 21.1 km, 10 km, 5 km and 1 km races. The start of the Marathon and Half-Marathon races is in Parc Jean-Drapeau, and the finish line for all running events is in Parc Maisonneuve.
Skate it like you mean it
The ISU Short Track Speed Skating World Tour features the world’s fastest skaters competing in a series of thrilling, explosive, nail-biting races. Montréal is a historic hotbed for the sport and has been home to many of its Olympic stars. The tour will gather the best short track speed skaters from around the world for some 8,000 attendees, October 16-19.
Jamie O'Meara
Jamie O'Meara was the Editor-in-Chief at C2 Montréal and the former Editor-in-Chief of alt-weekly newspaper HOUR Magazine.