TIFF is downtown. From North York it's one train.

The 30-second answer

The Toronto International Film Festival runs Thursday, September 10 through Sunday, September 20, 2026. It is the 51st edition, and the 2026 programme lists 293 films.

TIFF's visitor guide lists six venues, all downtown, clustered around King and Front Street West. The Opening Night Film is Siân Heder's Being Heumann, premiering September 10 at Roy Thomson Hall.

Public single tickets go on sale August 31 at 12 p.m. Regular screenings start at $30; premium screenings — the galas and red carpets — start at $46. Members get $2 off regular tickets during a pre-sale that runs August 21 to 27.

And the thing this page exists to tell you: none of the venues TIFF lists is in North York. All six are downtown. What there is, instead, is a subway line that puts you at the door without a transfer — and a closing time you need to plan around.

TIFF's six listed venues fit inside a ten-minute walk. Getting to that ten-minute walk is the whole North York problem, and Line 1 solves it — until 2 a.m.— North York Guide

The venues TIFF lists

TIFF publishes its venue list with addresses, and it is worth reading as a map rather than a list. Four of the six are on King Street West between University Avenue and Widmer Street — a three-block stretch you can walk end to end in under ten minutes. The other two are one block north and two blocks south.

The John W. H. Bassett Theatre is the new one. It sits inside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, seats more than 1,200, and is being used by the festival for the first time in 2026. If your ticket says Bassett, do not walk to King Street — you want Union, then west along Front. It is the only venue in the set that is not a King Street walk.

The Royal Alexandra Theatre is where Midnight Madness lives: ten late-night screenings, each starting at 11:59 p.m. Hold that thought — it is the single most important scheduling fact on this page for anyone travelling from North York, and it gets its own section below.

A seventh venue we could not place

One caveat on that table, and we would rather flag it than paper over it. The six venues above are the ones TIFF's own visitor guide publishes, with addresses. NOW Toronto's venue write-up names a seventh — Cinema Park — grouping it with the returning venues rather than with the Bassett, which it identifies as the new one.

We could not establish what or where Cinema Park is. No address, neighbourhood or description has been published for it that we could find; it does not appear on TIFF's venue list, and the tourism guides that enumerate TIFF venues do not mention it at all. So we are not going to guess. If it turns out to be a screen outside the downtown cluster, the walking distances in the table still hold for the six listed venues but would not describe the entire festival. We will update this page the moment an address is published — and in the meantime, check your ticket's venue against tiff.net before you plan the trip around it.

Tickets: the four dates that matter

TIFF releases tickets in waves, and the wave you qualify for decides whether you get into the screening you actually want. The public wave is the last one.

Note the shape of that: rush costs more than advance, not less. Rush is not the bargain tier — it is the last-minute tier, and you pay $2 for the privilege of not having planned. The genuine bargain is the Under-25 Free Pass, which is exactly what its name says.

Getting there from North York

This is a downtown festival and there is no way to soften that. The good news is that the trip is unusually clean — for most of North York it is one train, no transfer, one fare, and you surface at the corner of the venue cluster.

Line 1 is a U, and that is the whole trick

Line 1 Yonge-University runs down the Yonge side, through Union, and back up the University side. That means a southbound train from the Yonge-side North York stations does not stop at Union — it keeps going, and St Andrew is the very next stop. You do not change trains. You do not touch Line 2.

• From Finch, North York Centre, Sheppard-Yonge, York Mills, Lawrence or Eglinton — board southbound, stay on past Union, get off at St Andrew. From Finch that is 17 stops on one train.
• From Finch West, Downsview Park, Sheppard West, Wilson, Yorkdale, Lawrence West or Glencairn — board southbound down University Avenue and get off at St Andrew, two stops before Union. Shorter trip, same platform exit.
• For the Scotiabank Theatre at 259 Richmond West, Osgoode is as good as St Andrew — Queen and University, then west and south a couple of blocks.
• For the John W. H. Bassett Theatre at 255 Front West, stay on to Union and walk west along Front. The PATH also links Union to the convention centre, though stretches of it close in the evenings and on weekends, so the surface walk is the version that always works.

Budget roughly 35 to 45 minutes each way from the top of Line 1, and noticeably less from Lawrence, Eglinton, Yorkdale or Glencairn. That is our estimate from stop counts, not a published TTC figure — run your own address through the TTC trip planner, and check service advisories before you leave. Weekend Line 1 closures are announced close to the date and would turn this one-train trip into a shuttle bus.

King Street is closed September 10–13

TIFF states that King Street West will be closed September 10 to 13 for Festival Street, the free pedestrian takeover running roughly between Peter Street and University Avenue. That is the same three blocks holding four of those six venues, and it lands on opening weekend.

Two consequences for anyone coming from the north. First, the 504 King streetcar is not the move on those days — TIFF's own guidance says the closest stop is John Street but that service is limited during opening weekend. Second, Festival Street is free, which makes September 10–13 the cheapest possible TIFF day trip: take Line 1 to St Andrew, walk the closed street, and buy nothing. The full activation lineup was still being announced as of mid-August.

The last train home

This is the part that goes wrong, and it goes wrong specifically for people who do not live downtown.

The TTC says the subway runs from approximately 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and approximately 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. on Sundays, and that exact first and last train times vary by station. A last train that leaves St Andrew near closing is not the same as a last train that reaches Finch — the further north you live, the earlier your real deadline.

The Blue Night Network runs from about 1:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., every 30 minutes or better. For North York the relevant spine is the 320 Yonge, which runs the Yonge corridor north to Steeles; the 336 Finch West, 352 Lawrence West and 384 Sheppard West cover the crosstown legs on the west side. From the venues you would ride the 304 King east to Yonge and transfer north. Check the current Blue Night Network map before you rely on any of it — route coverage is reviewed periodically, and a 2 a.m. surprise is a $60 cab.

The simpler advice, if you have a choice: take the late screening on a night you can afford a 3 a.m. arrival, or take an afternoon one. A 4 p.m. Sunday screening at the Lightbox and a 4 p.m. Sunday screening at Cineplex are the same trip home. An 11:59 p.m. one is not.

If you drive

Driving into this is the worst version of the trip, and it is worst precisely on the days most people want to go. King Street West is physically closed September 10–13. The venue cluster sits in the middle of the Entertainment District on festival nights. There is paid parking throughout the area, but you would be paying event-rate downtown parking to arrive later than the subway would have got you.

The one case for the car is a matinée on a weekday outside the closure, with a booked lot. Otherwise: St Andrew.

GO Transit is a marginal third option. The Barrie line stops at Downsview Park and runs to Union, but off-peak and weekend service is roughly hourly and the Barrie line has had repeated weekend construction closures through 2026. Check gotransit.com for your specific date rather than assuming it runs; it is not a late-night option in any case.

What is actually in North York during TIFF

Nothing official, and we are not going to invent something.

What that leaves is a straightforward proposition: on everything published so far, TIFF is a day trip for North York, the same way the Ex or the Beach is. The transit is better than either. The honest local advice is about timing and logistics, not about a local venue that does not exist — which is why this page spends its length on stations, closing times and on-sale dates rather than pretending the festival comes to Yonge and Sheppard.

TIFF: The Market is not for you

New for 2026, and widely written about, so it is worth being clear about: TIFF: The Market runs September 10 to 16 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and is the festival's first dedicated industry market — 650 market screening slots, roughly 120 exhibitor spaces, business lounges, an innovation zone and a seven-day speakers summit.

It is a trade event. Buyers, sellers, agents and accredited industry. A public single ticket does not get you in, and the market's screenings are not the festival's screenings. The confusing part is geography: the Market and the brand-new John W. H. Bassett Theatre are in the same building. If you have a Bassett ticket you are walking past a market you cannot attend, into a public screening you can.

Before you go

• Bags are capped at 12″ × 12″ × 6″. Backpacks, large totes and suitcases are refused at the door, and outside food is not allowed in the cinemas. Coming in from North York means you cannot run home to drop a bag — pack for the door, not for the day.
• Arrive 30 minutes early. TIFF asks for it, and there is a reason: your seat is held only until 15 minutes before the scheduled start, after which it goes to the rush line. A late Line 1 does not hold your seat.
• Wheel-Trans drop-off is at the east corner of Wellington Street West and John Street — one block south of the King Street cluster, outside the Festival Street closure.
• Check your home station's last train on the TTC's station page, not the general 2 a.m. figure, before booking anything that starts after 9 p.m.

What we could not confirm

Four things were still open as of August 13, 2026. Three are normal for this point in the calendar. The first is not, and it is the reason this page says "the venues TIFF lists" rather than "all the venues."

• Cinema Park. Named as a seventh venue by NOW Toronto and grouped with the returning ones. No address, neighbourhood or description published anywhere we could reach, and absent from TIFF's own venue list. Until that is resolved we cannot promise you the festival is entirely downtown — only that every venue with a published address is.
• The Festival Street activation lineup. The closure dates are published; the full programme of what fills the closed street was still being announced.
• Venue-by-venue screening times. The schedule is live on TIFF's site, but individual start times shift, and we have not reproduced a schedule here that would be wrong within a week.
• TTC service changes for the festival period. The TTC typically adjusts surface routes around the King Street closure and announces it close to the date. Check advisories in the week of September 7.

We will update this page as those land. In the meantime, the events hub tracks what else is on, and this weekend's picks covers the nearer term.