Much like 2026, Birmingham had its hand forced by the cancellation of the Durban Games, meaning organisers had less time than expected to prepare for the thousands of athletes and tourists.

Despite this, it's been considered a success - Australia's athletes shone with dozens of medals, while the city itself put on a show.

There are key differences between Birmingham, a city of more than a million people, and the regional games, which will be held across four cities, but there are fundamental lessons that organisers must be across to make sure everything runs smoothly.

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Ballarat resident Stuart Benjamin decided to go to Birmingham - independent of any state government positions he holds, he said - to see for himself how it all works.

"This is the biggest thing that's ever going to happen in our community," he said after his return.

"It was even bigger than I possibly contemplated, it was insane how big it was."

Mr Benjamin went for five days, catching athletics, boxing, netball, and the closing ceremony, and staying in repurposed student accommodation in the city.

There are important lessons, he said, but he left confident Ballarat will play its part well, if actions are taken early.

"The concerns I went over with are not the concerns that I have anymore - I have plenty of concerns, they're all new ones," he said.

"My absolute number one concern for the Commonwealth Games in Ballarat, the risk we face is we'll see people potentially come to Ballarat on the train, they'll come to the Ballarat station or potentially an events station closer to the stadium, they'll come in to do the activity then get back on the train and leave

"They'll never interact with the rest of the city, all we end up being is a venue host with no long-term benefit out of it, and that's my biggest fear."

The ticket buying experience for events was "a nightmare", Mr Benjamin said, and it's hoped this will improve before 2026.

While there were hundreds of "cheap seats", for about £15, or $25 in real money, these sold out quickly, and it was a big jump to the rest of the seats.

There were no "passes" to see all the athletics events, and each day was split into two sessions, in the morning and evening.

That meant to see the entire athletics program, you'd need to buy about 12 separate tickets across the six days.

"It's important we look at selling passes of tickets to people who are true believers, they'll sit in that seat and cheer for six days," he said.

Also, while the events will be geographically separated for 2026 - it will be hard to catch a cricket game in Morwell then get to prime-time boxing in Ballarat - in Birmingham it was "difficult" to spontaneously choose an event on the day.

"You couldn't say 'well, I've got the afternoon, could I just go to the netball', it wasn't easy to just grab a ticket," Mr Benjamin said.

"The controls they had on them to buy the tickets were so strict, probably to stop scalping or whatever, that it was almost impossible to use the tickets, so in fact, you saw about 80 per cent of people going through the gates were still using print-outs, because it was too hard to use the digital version, that's insane in the current age."

While the privatised British rail network was a shemozzle, Mr Benjamin is confident Victoria's system will be able to handle the influx of visitors.

There are hopes a temporary or basic train platform will be built close to the stadium to help get people in and out, and it's expected there will be a vast network of shuttlebuses, as there was in Birmingham.

"The key will be the train part," he said.

"At Alexander Stadium (in Birmingham), they were able to clean out 30,000 people on buses, there were queues and it might have taken an hour.

"It's not that far to walk from Mars into town - will people choose that if you say it's an hour wait for a bus or a 15 minute walk?"

Ballarat has about 3000 hotel rooms, but if we want people to stay for longer during the games, we'll need a lot more.

Mr Benjamin said he paid "the most I've ever paid for a hotel room", noting "there's never enough for these kinds of events".

The question is how much will be temporary, to ensure it's sustainable after the event, and how much business will we lose to visitors commuting from Melbourne each day.

"One of my biggest concerns before I left, we have to build accommodation for the athletes, but there's also the bigwigs as well, we don't have the six-star accommodation these people require, the reality I think is they'll stay in Melbourne because they'll need to do a day here, a day in Geelong," Mr Benjamin said.

"That business can stay in Melbourne, we have enough things to worry about.

"We know we've got a massive undersupply of 3.5 to 5 star accommodation, and we need a couple of 120 room venues."

That'll be hard work on top of building the athletes village, which the state government has promised will be a mix of private and community housing - no location has been decided for it yet, but it will need services like hairdressers and more.

"The really hard thing, with commissioning things, commissioning stadiums is easy but accommodation is difficult," Mr Benjamin said.

"They didn't have to test any of the accommodation because people were already living in it, but for new buildings, that's a lot of testing, every toilet needs to be flushed at the same time, and the mess facilities have to be able to house 30 per cent of the participants at once, so if you've got 2000 people here, you have to feed about 650 at once.

"That's definitely having the same size as the Mercure events centre running 24-hours a day, that's a big tent."

Recent opinion coverage in metropolitan media has expressed derision at the idea that regional audiences will even show up - Mr Benjamin had strong words for these ideas.

That said, it was an "interesting atmosphere" in Birmingham, and it will be different in sport-mad Victoria.

"I'd go to the boxing and people there just had no idea what was going on, they're cheering but they don't know what they're cheering for," he said.

"The athletics, they played music the whole time, and the commentators had to say 'now's the time to start clapping' for the high jump run-up.

"I don't think we'll have that problem here."

In fact, the estimated Mars Stadium expansion, bringing its 12,000 seat capacity to 30,000 temporarily, "may not be enough".

"I'm worried Mars won't have enough seats for the demand that's going to be there - I mean, there's five of us in my family, I'll be buying five tickets to every session," he said.

One disappointment in Birmingham was the live sites, which Mr Benjamin described as "a couple of beanbags" - this will need to be improved if events are going to be held in different cities.

The state government has appointed a minister for Commonwealth Games Legacy, Shaun Leane, and has promised sporting upgrades and housing for host cities.

But it's intangible benefits that must also be considered, Mr Benjamin said - "it's not just bricks and mortar, it's more than that".

"In Birmingham, the local traders association worked with the university, so for example, rather than having to go to the national supplier of security fencing, because they're the only ones with enough supply, they instead got four or five smaller companies together who did a joint bid," he said.

"Now that group can bid for bigger things, and that's real legacy.

"Birmingham University, an incredible institution, they're going to live off this for the next decade, they've built up a whole skillbase on this, a lot of students will go to university in Birmingham because of this exposure.

"I think there's a lot of those other legacy items we haven't turned our minds to, I don't know what they are but we'll work it out."

More sports are expected to be announced within the month, with Ballarat pushing to host the marathon and a reintroduced rowing program, as well as mountain biking in Creswick.

Mr Benjamin said he is convinced the event will be a success.

"We can do it, absolutely - I went over thinking we couldn't, I've come back thinking we can," he said.

"They didn't have to build anything, but they only had two years, we've got three and a half and we're incredibly motivated."

The 2026 opening ceremony is March 17, just over 1300 days away.

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