September Newsletter

Two-month Festival of Football

Football fever is running high in Wellington, with less than six weeks to go until the capital’s first taste of FIFA World Cup football.

September sees the start of the city’s two-month long Festival of Football culminating in the quarter-finals at the Wellington Stadium on Saturday 8 November.

This festival includes the Upper Hutt Multi-Ethnic Football Tournament with Wellington’s diverse population represented by football teams from Tuvalu, Assyria, Turkey and Somalia. The Yellow Fever Freestyle Football Festival puts New Zealand football tricksters on centre stage and the Wellington Masters Football Tournament showcases those players aging gracefully in the beautiful game.

All these community events are building excitement in Wellington and raising awareness of the upcoming FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup.

In Wellington’s four major centres, playing fields are being carefully prepared and local schools are buzzing at the thought of getting behind their allocated team - Wellington City will be ferociously backing Brazil, Lower Hutt will cheer on Korea Republic, the kids of Porirua will be behind Nigeria and England will enjoy the support of Upper Hutt.

A total of 80 buses will bring in thousands of school children to the opening mathces on Thursday 30 October, and the Wellington City Council is encouraging city businesses to allow their workers to take a ‘long fitness lunch’ by walking to the stadium for the noon kick-off and enjoying some work/life balance through the allure of world-class football.

A parade with samba music and bugles and drums will lead the way from Civic Square to the stadium for the much-anticipated kick-off.

Wellington calls itself a football city and when the first whistle blows at the end of October, the world will see why.