The 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, the 46th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held from September 9 to 18, 2021.^[1] Due to the continued COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, the festival was staged as a "hybrid" of in-person and digital screenings.^[2] Most films were screened both in-person and on the digital platform, although a few titles were withheld by their distributors from the digital platform and instead were screened exclusively in-person.

Artistic director Cameron Bailey indicated that while the 2021 festival would not fully return to the size of program that it offered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, it would be significantly bigger than the reduced lineup that was offered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.^[1] Overall, the festival featured over 100 films, including a special retrospective program devoted to the work of Canadian documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin.^[3]

In-person screenings were held at the festival's traditional venues, including the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Princess of Wales Theatre and Roy Thomson Hall, the latter two of which hosted the world premiere of Stephen Chbosky's film adaptation of Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen, the festival's Opening Night Gala Presentation.^[3] Denis Villeneuve's film Dune received an IMAX world premiere screening at the Cinesphere.^[3]

As in 2020, digital screenings took place on the Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox platform.

In addition to Toronto, the festival also staged a number of satellite screenings in other Canadian cities for the first time.^[3]

The first 13 films selected for the festival were announced in June 2021. The gala and special presentation programs were announced on July 20,^[11][12] while Contemporary World Cinema and Discovery titles were announced on July 28,^[13] TIFF Docs, Midnight Madness and Wavelengths were announced on August 4,^[14] Shortcuts and Platform were announced on August 11,^[15] and Primetime was announced on August 13.^[16]

Walt Becker's Clifford the Big Red Dog was initially selected to be one of the Gala Presentations, but was withdrawn from the festival, after US distributor Paramount Pictures pulled it from its release schedule due to the rise of the Delta variant of COVID-19.^[17]

The festival also announced a special event screening of an unspecified new film by Steven Soderbergh.^[18] Details of the film were not announced in advance, except that it was not expected to be his known upcoming film KIMI.^[18] Soderbergh ultimately premiered a reedited version of his 1991 film Kafka titled Mr. Kneff.^[19]

The festival's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list, collecting the films named as the top Canadian films of the year by critics and film festival programmers from across Canada, was released on December 6, 2021.^[23]