Recent research highlights promise and limits of critical pedagogy within Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). Drawing on ethnographic research with an SDP organisation in Colombia, this paper analyses how critical pedagogy implicitly transpires in daily practice and how SDP employees and participants understand and respond to these practices. We specifically examine how donor-non-governmental organisation relations affect the experience of SDP practitioners and participants in ways that do not support the successes of critical pedagogy and may potentially undermine it. The findings raise critical questions such as what SDP organisations can accomplish within these ‘normative’ power relations and potential reconfigurations.