Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Property Prices: What Is Confirmed (2026 Update)

If you've been following the Brisbane 2032 venue plan, it's worth setting aside anything published before March 2025.  The footprint has changed significantly:

• The Gabba rebuild was scrapped in favour of a brand-new stadium at Victoria Park

• The Brisbane athletes' village moved straight to the RNA Showgrounds in to Bowen Hills. 

To help you make sense of what this means for your property strategy, we've pulled together what is confirmed as of October 2026, what the research says past Games did to property prices and how to evaluate your options as a buyer today.

The short answer: studies of earlier Games found price effects of a few per cent, close to the new precincts, with no city-wide jump. Nobody credible has put a number on a Games effect for Brisbane.

The venue plan in one place

The Queensland Government's 2032 Delivery Plan (25 March 2025) funds 17 venues, seven new and ten upgraded, under a $7.1 billion program. The Australian Government contributes up to $3.435 billion and Queensland $3.665 billion. About $3.5 billion more is set aside for the athletes villages. Budgets for individual venues have not been published.

A quick word of caution for buyers. The final sports program is not confirmed until 2026 to 2027 and on 30 September 2026 the Treasurer would not rule out scaling back venues. Treat any "near a venue" argument with that in mind.

Brisbane 

Below is the baseline across Brisbane, as of October 2026. This covers confirmed builds, site selections and current status.

Three things the old version of this article had wrong, in case you have read them elsewhere:

• QSAC at Nathan is not the athletics venue. Track and field events moved to Victoria Park. QSAC is designated solely for potential training use, accepted in principle and with no budget published.

• The Gabba is not getting a mega-upgrade. It will be decommissioned after the Games and the land will be redeveloped. 

• There is no arena above Roma Street Station. That proposal was dropped. The new arena is planned beside The Gabba and the government has said it is not required for the Games themselves.

On cost, the government has not published a current figure for the stadium or the aquatic centre. The March 2025 review put the stadium at $3.785 billion and media reports since have ranged from $3.6 billion to $3.8 billion without citing an official document. At a parliamentary estimates hearing on 22 July 2026, the delivery authority said both venues sit within the $7.1 billion program and that budgets will be released once they are agreed with the Australian Government. The ABC reported that month that the aquatic centre design had gone back for rework to fit the budget. The authority told the hearing its scope is unchanged and early design concepts released on 24 July 2026 show three new covered pools and a restored Centenary Pool.

The village is planned to leave around 1,800 homes at the showgrounds. After the Games, Lendlease plans to take them to market as build to rent or for sale.

Victoria Park has been contested. Heritage applications under federal law were rejected in January and May 2026, and opponents said in May 2026 that they planned a Supreme Court challenge. We could not find any record of one being filed. A draft legacy plan for the precinct was open for consultation from 3 August to 27 September 2026. Under it, around two-thirds of Victoria Park stays as green and public space.

Gold Coast

The proposed Gold Coast athletes village has moved to RACV Royal Pines Resort in Benowa, replacing the original Robina Town Centre site.

However, the project is still in proposal stage. The village could house up to 3,000 competitors and officials and RACV has applied to amend the Royal Pines resort scheme to lift the maximum number of dwellings on the site from 1,167 to 3,367, with buildings of up to 25 storeys (Gold Coast Bulletin, 14 July 2026). The State decides the application, not the council and councillors have raised concerns about the lack of information. We could not find a decision, a builder or a timetable. If you are buying in Benowa or near the resort, that application is worth watching.

The one large new venue is the Gold Coast Arena at Southport. at least 12,000 seats, $480 million, a preferred consortium named in March 2026, construction from 2027 and completion due in 2030. It is funded by the City of Gold Coast and its private partners, outside the state program. The Gold Coast Hockey Centre at Labrador is being upgraded. The rest are existing venues, including the stadiums at Carrara and Robina, with temporary sites planned at Broadbeach and the Southport Broadwater Parklands. The City of Gold Coast says final venue locations are confirmed in 2026 and the sports program in 2027.

On transport, Light Rail Stage 3 from Broadbeach South to Burleigh Heads opened on 9 August 2026. Stage 4 to Coolangatta was cancelled on 1 September 2025 and replaced with a bus service. If you were sold a southern Gold Coast property on the promise of light rail, that promise is gone.

Sunshine Coast

The Sunshine Coast village is in the Maroochydore City Centre. Early works began in December 2025 and enable more than 1,800 homes. The government describes it as an integrated village, arena and cultural precinct. Sunshine Coast Stadium at Bokarina goes from about 1,000 permanent seats to 10,680, with 20,000 in Games mode. A new mountain bike centre is also planned.

The rail line known as The Wave is the most misreported project on the coast. It has three stages, and only one is funded to build:

• Stage 1, Beerwah to Caloundra. 19 km of heavy rail, with $5.5 billion allocated, split evenly between the Australian and Queensland governments. Contracts are awarded. The state says it opens before 2032, with no fixed date.
• Stage 2, Caloundra to Birtinya. 7 km of rail. Planning money only. Not funded for construction.
• Stage 3, Birtinya to Maroochydore and the airport. About 21 km and not rail. It is a metro style vehicle or express bus, with no federal funding.

So a train to Maroochydore is not in the funded plan. The government's stated aim is a public transport link from Birtinya to Maroochydore and the airport by 2032.

Regional Queensland

Rockhampton hosts rowing and canoe sprint on the Fitzroy River, approved by the IOC on 17 September 2026. Barlow Park in Cairns and the Toowoomba Showgrounds are being upgraded and Townsville and Mackay have existing venues on the list.

The transport projects

For most buyers the transport matters more than the venues, because it is still there in 2033.

The entrance to the new underground Cross River Rail station at Roma Street, July 2026. Photo: Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

The table below shows where South East Queensland’s key transport projects stand as of October 2026, covering confirmed builds, routes and current progress.

Cross River Rail also adds three Gold Coast stations, at Pimpama, Merrimac and Hope Island. We could not find a dedicated new station or busway for Victoria Park in any government source.

Has the Olympics shown up in prices yet?

Brisbane has had an extraordinary five-year run. Between 2021 and mid-2026, Greater Brisbane dwelling values rose 55.4%, to a median of $1,048,880 (Cotality Home Value Index, 1 October 2026), while regional Queensland wasn't far behind at 52.0%.

By late 2026, the market has turned. On Cotality's figures, values fell 4.7% in the September quarter and sit 5.4% below their May 2026 peak. Houses now have a median of $1,146,078 and units $834,627. PropTrack has Brisbane 3.9% below its March 2026 peak after six monthly falls.

Crucially, Cotality puts that down to interest rate rises and tax changes, not Games headlines.

So, what happens when you zoom in on the suburbs sitting right next to the proposed 2032 precincts? Sale medians and sales counts are for the past 12 months. Five year growth is Cotality's change in median value. All from Cotality's OnTheHouse suburb pages, read 1 to 2 October 2026.

Two things stand out here. Inner Brisbane units near the venues have run well ahead of the city, up 76% to 92% in five years against 55.4% for all Greater Brisbane dwellings. Houses in the same suburbs have run behind it, at 28% to 47%. That is a story about units catching up across inner Brisbane as much as anything Olympic and nothing in these figures separates a Games effect from the wider South East Queensland boom.

A caution on the data, however. The sale medians cover the past 12 months, so they mostly predate the recent falls. Suburbs with fewer than about 20 sales are unreliable and we have left those cells out. Spring Hill houses are the example, the two main data providers report sale medians of $1,225,000 and $2,285,000 from fewer than 20 sales each, so the table shows Cotality's modelled median value for all houses in the suburb (31 August 2026) and not a sales figure.

For the coast suburbs, city-wide comparisons are thinner. PropTrack's median dwelling value for the Gold Coast is $1.158 million (September 2026) and we could not find a five year change from a primary source. For the Sunshine Coast, realestate.com.au figures to August 2026 put the median dwelling at $1.213 million, up 49% in five years, as reported by Sunshine Coast News.

What past Olympics did to property prices

There is published research on this and it is more modest than the headlines.

• Across several Games, including Sydney 2000: Somerville and Wetzel (University of British Columbia, 2010) found no consistent Olympic effect on host city prices. For Sydney they measured about 0.7 percentage points a year around the announcement and no bust afterwards.
• London 2012: Kavetsos (Urban Studies, 2012) found prices in the host boroughs were 2.1% to 3.3% higher after the announcement. Jakar and Philippou (2024) found a slight, short lived effect limited to the wards around the Olympic Park.
• New stadiums: Ahlfeldt and Kavetsos (2014) found prices about 17% higher within one kilometre of the new Wembley. The effect was local to the stadium.
• PyeongChang 2018: Hur and Kim (2022) found about a 6.6% uplift in the host districts.

The pattern is small, measured effects that sit close to the new precinct or stadium. None of these studies supports a city doubling in value because of an Olympics.

For Brisbane itself, we could not find any analysis from PropTrack, Cotality, the Reserve Bank or a major bank that puts a number on a Games effect. The forecasts of prices doubling by 2032 that circulated in 2024 and 2025 came from agencies and did not publish a method, so we have removed that claim from this article. CBRE (April 2026) argues that Olympic cities did better in the four years after their Games than before and that fears of a slump afterwards are not supported, but it has not published its figures.

Rents

Brisbane's vacancy rate was 0.9% in August 2026, with 3,090 dwellings available, 10% fewer than a year earlier (SQM Research, release republished by AdviserVoice). SQM's asking rents for the week ending 28 September 2026 were $839 a week for houses, up 7.7% over 12 months and $648 for units, up 5.5%. Cotality's median Brisbane rent is $742 a week, up 6.4% over the year to mid September 2026.

There is no official rent forecast to 2032. The only published projection is from PropTrack (November 2025) and runs to 2035: Greater Brisbane house rents rising from $650 to $852 a week and unit rents from $640 to $839. It is an inflation based projection and does not isolate a Games effect.

Monitoring by AHURI and Q Shelter (November 2025) found one bedroom rents rose 8% in Brisbane, 7% on the Sunshine Coast and 5% on the Gold Coast in the year to June 2025, with affordability worsening where Games investment is concentrated.

The risks a buyer should weigh

A lot of units are planned near the venues. Urbis counted 75 inner Brisbane apartment projects with more than 20,000 apartments between them: 4,934 under construction, 6,580 approved and not started and 8,536 at application stage (realestate.com.au, March 2026). About 35% are at risk of not going ahead, so the real number will be lower. On top of that, the Woolloongabba priority development area allows for more than 16,000 homes over its life and a proposal for Bowen Hills would lift heights from 30 to 50 storeys and allow up to 27,000. The villages themselves become housing after the Games. If you are buying a unit in these suburbs, the building next door in 2034 matters as much as the stadium.

Building is expensive and slow. The Queensland Audit Office names the construction workforce shortfall as a key risk to the Games program (Major projects 2025). Westpac (May 2026) has construction costs rising about 6% to 8% a year. For anyone buying off the plan, that means a real chance of delay and a sunset clause worth reading closely.

Resumptions sit with the transport projects, not the venues. We found no residential resumptions for Victoria Park, the Gabba, the Bowen Hills village or Royal Pines. The Wave's Stage 3 route was revised to avoid about 80 homes and businesses, but 52 waterfront homes at Mountain Creek are still slated for the Mooloolah River Interchange. Logan and Gold Coast Faster Rail involves hundreds of full and partial takes between Kuraby and Beenleigh.

The plan can still change. It has changed once already, budgets for the two biggest venues are not yet agreed and the Royal Pines village is not yet approved.

The cycle is bigger than the Games. Brisbane prices are falling in late 2026 and Cotality points to interest rate rises and tax changes. The tax changes are now law: from 1 July 2027, negative gearing on residential property is limited to new builds and the 50% capital gains tax discount is replaced with indexation. Properties held at 12 May 2026 are exempt from the negative gearing change and the capital gains changes apply only to gains after 1 July 2027 (ATO). The detailed definition of a new build is still in draft legislation, so investors should take advice before relying on it. Six years out, those forces will move your purchase price far more than a venue will.

What this means if you are buying

• Buy the suburb and the home, not the event. The measured Olympic effect is a few per cent. A poor floor plan, a flood overlay or a busy road costs more than that.
• Weight the transport over the venues. A Cross River Rail station is used every day from 2029. A stadium is used on event days.
• Check what is funded. "Confirmed" projects on this page have money and contracts. Anything described as proposed, in planning or at business case stage may not happen, as southern Gold Coast buyers found with Light Rail Stage 4.
• For units near the venues, look at the supply first. Ask what is approved within a few streets and what the height limits allow.
• For houses near the venues, check the planning. Higher density next door changes what you are buying.

How Hunter Gather can help

We act for buyers across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. If you are weighing a property near one of these precincts, we can check the planning, the supply and the comparable sales before you commit. Book a discovery call.

Some of the homes we have bought for clients in the suburbs on this page:

Kangaroo Point$750,000, bought 2026Chandler$3,930,000, bought 2026Maroochydore$690,000, bought 2023

Frequently asked questions

Will the 2032 Olympics increase Brisbane house prices?

Studies of past Games found small effects of a few per cent, mostly in suburbs next to regeneration precincts or new stadiums, not city-wide jumps. No PropTrack, Cotality, Reserve Bank or major bank analysis puts a number on a Games effect for Brisbane. The bigger drivers in 2026 are interest rates, tax changes and housing undersupply.

Which suburbs are closest to the confirmed Olympic venues and villages?

In Brisbane: Herston, Spring Hill, Bowen Hills and Fortitude Valley (Brisbane Stadium, the National Aquatic Centre and the athletes village), Woolloongabba, East Brisbane and Kangaroo Point (the Gabba precinct), plus Chandler, Belmont, Tennyson and Birkdale. On the coasts: Bokarina, Birtinya and Warana (Sunshine Coast Stadium), Maroochydore (village), Benowa (Royal Pines village) and Southport (Gold Coast Arena). Sport allocations are still being finalised in 2026 and 2027.

What has happened to Brisbane property prices since the Games were awarded in July 2021?

Greater Brisbane dwelling values rose 55.4% over the five years to September 2026, to a median of $1,048,880 (Cotality). Prices have since fallen for six straight months and PropTrack puts Brisbane 3.9% below its March 2026 peak.

What is the forecast for Queensland rents up to 2032?

There is no official forecast to 2032. A PropTrack projection to 2035 has Greater Brisbane house rents rising from $650 to $852 a week and unit rents from $640 to $839. Brisbane's vacancy rate is 0.9% (SQM Research, August 2026) and Cotality's median rent is $742 a week, up 6.4% over the year.

What happens to property prices after an Olympics?

Research on Sydney 2000 found no bust after the Games. Research on London 2012 found a slight, short lived effect in the wards around the Olympic Park. CBRE says host city markets did better in the four years after their Games than before, but has not published its figures.

Where will the athletes villages be and what do they become afterwards?

Brisbane's village is at the RNA Showgrounds in Bowen Hills, with about 1,800 homes that go to market as build to rent or for sale after the Games. The Gold Coast village is proposed within RACV Royal Pines at Benowa, for up to 3,000 competitors and officials. The Sunshine Coast village is in the Maroochydore City Centre, with works enabling more than 1,800 homes. Together the villages hold about 16,400 beds.

Header image, artist impression: Queensland Government, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

Figures are current as at 2 October 2026 and come from the sources linked. This article is general information, not financial advice.