Sport is a key educational and leadership arena for societal change and today’s sustainability challenges. Sports organisations have the potential to provide, initiate and create processes, situations and spaces for learning, socialisation and meaning making that go beyond traditional schooling and lead community change and capacity building towards sustainable development. This article is located in the research fields of public pedagogy and the intersection of leadership and sport for development, and contributes knowledge about how sports organisations’ public pedagogical practices and leadership support community change towards sustainability. The study is confined to soccer and the non-governmental sports organisation Futebol dá força (Football gives strength). The approach of public pedagogical leadership is developed and used to analyse and reflect on the function of sports organisations’ pedagogical leadership in community change and capacity building towards sustainability.