A Tale of Three Cities
With less than a week to go before the inaugural game of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Mexico’s three host cities for 13 of the tournament’s 104 matches are preparing special events (and massive security) to welcome millions of fans and showcase their distinctive cultural identities. Guadalajara is claiming the title of “most Mexican” host metropolis as the home of mariachis, charros and tequila; CDMX has been showing off protests, gridlock and axolotls; while Monterrey will hold a “mega cabalgata” with a parade of 1,500 riders. As ticket prices have put game attendance out of reach for most Mexicans, the free FIFA Fan Festivals in each city will become epicentres of local fandom.
Mexico City
The opening ceremony at Estadio Ciudad de México (formerly Azteca) — the only stadium in history to host three World Cup opening ceremonies — will feature a lineup of Mexican stars including Alejandro Fernández, Maná, Lila Downs and Los Ángeles Azules, as well as Shakira and Nigerian artist Burna Boy performing “Dai Dai”, the official song of the tournament. Additional matches include Uzbekistan vs. Colombia (June 17), Czech Republic vs. Mexico (June 24), and two knockout-round games: a Round of 32 match on June 30 and a Round of 16 match on July 5.
The FIFA Fan Festival runs from June 11 through July 19 in the Zócalo, with an estimated daily capacity of 60,000 people; there will be 18 neighbourhood football festivals across all 16 boroughs, with free match screenings and cultural activities running the full length of the tournament.
Monterrey
Monterrey’s Estadio BBVA will host four matches, including Sweden vs. Tunisia, Tunisia vs. Japan, South Korea vs. South Africa, and a Round of 32 match. The musical lineup for the tournament features La Leyenda, Chayanne, and Caballo Dorado, as well as international acts Imagine Dragons (June 21) and Enrique Iglesias (June 28). Regional acts include Grupo Firme, Los Cadetes de Linares, Genitallica, and El Gran Silencio, with a surprise headliner closing the fan festival on July 19.
Monterrey’s FIFA Fan Festival will be held at Parque Fundidora, running from June 11 through July 19 and offering free live broadcasts of every match in the tournament, alongside concerts, food and family activities. A second viewing site will operate at the Estadio de Monterrey.
Guadalajara
Guadalajara is hosting four World Cup matches, including South Korea vs. Czech Republic (June 11), Mexico vs. South Korea (June 18), Colombia vs. DR Congo (June 23), and Uruguay vs. Spain (June 26) — highlighted as one of the most attractive matchups of the entire group stage. Governor Pablo Lemus has announced a series of free concerts at the Plaza de La Minerva: Maná performs June 17, and Alejandro Fernández on June 25. Spanish-Mexican tenor Plácido Domingo will perform on June 25 at the Conjunto Santander de Artes Escénicas in a recital titled “De España a México, la zarzuela que nos une.”
The city’s FIFA Fan Festival will be held in the Centro Histórico at Plaza Liberación, featuring giant screens for match broadcasts along with food, concerts, and art exhibitions.
Mexico Gets “Most-Improved” in IP Protection
Mexico’s recent wave of intellectual property reforms has its roots in US trade pressure (but what doesn’t these days?)
In 2025, USTR Jamieson Greer moved Mexico onto the “Priority Watch List” over USMCA implementation failures: insufficient criminal prosecutions for counterfeiting and piracy, inadequate pharmaceutical IP protection, and missing implementing regulations for copyright and industrial property reforms.
Mexico has since moved back down to the “Watch List” — where it had sat for years — by committing to submit two specific reform bills to Congress within 30 days. The improvement is real but incomplete: notorious counterfeit markets like Tepito in Mexico City and San Juan de Dios in Guadalajara continue operating, and border surveillance for pirated imports remains weak.
Outgoing IMPI director Santiago Nieto, appointed by President Sheinbaum in October 2024, left office having overseen the seizure of 7.8 million counterfeit products. During his tenure, IMPI processed more than 220,000 trademark registration requests and granted 700 patents to Mexican nationals (a historic record) while anti-piracy operations posted an 85 per cent increase in the value of seized goods year-over-year.
On April 3, a reform to the Industrial Property Protection Law cut patent resolution times from up to seven years to one, introduced provisional application filings, and — for the first time — regulated IP infringements committed through artificial intelligence, placing Mexico alongside the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea in this regard. Nieto stepped down at the end of April to pursue the governorship of Querétaro; his successor, Vidal Llerenas, now inherits the momentum.
On May 29, President Sheinbaum submitted two additional initiatives to Senate President Laura Itzel Castillo Juárez. They won’t be debated until September, but their scope is significant.
The first amends the Federal Copyright Law to require ISPs to maintain public policies for terminating repeat infringers. ISPs face secondary liability for enabling infringement, and IMPI fines could reach up to 40,000 times the UMA (roughly 4.6 million pesos) for unauthorised public use of protected works.
The second raises criminal penalties across the supply chain. Producing, importing, or selling unauthorised copies at commercial scale would carry sentences of up to 10 years. Street-level sales would mean four to ten years in prison. Reselling SEP-issued free textbooks would be punishable by up to seven years.
As IP expert Mauricio Jalife has noted, weak enforcement contaminates the entire system. Mexico has updated its legal framework and ramped up operations, but reform on paper and enforcement in practice have historically diverged. The immediate test is the World Cup — already a flashpoint for counterfeit merchandise, unofficial streams, and fake tickets. The larger tests come in July and thereafter potentially every year, when the USMCA review puts Mexico’s IP commitments on the negotiating table, and in September, when Congress debates the reforms.
Alejandro González Iñárritu Joins Mexico’s Intellectual Pantheon
On May 26, González Iñárritu was formally inducted into El Colegio Nacional — the first filmmaker in the institution’s more than eighty years of history. The president of El Colegio Nacional noted that this represented a long-overdue recognition of a discipline that has contributed so much to Mexican and global culture.
Founded in 1943, El Colegio Nacional brings together the intellectual elite of Mexico, counting among its past members writers such as Nobel laureate Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, and another Nobel Prize-winning Mexican, the chemist Mario Molina. The institution had previously extended an invitation to filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón in 2017, who declined because of other commitments. Iñárritu said that he had for years hesitated to accept the invitation, but that the honour deeply moved him and is a tribute to Mexican cinema and the generations of filmmakers who have made it what it is today.
Describing himself as “not a man of words,” he delivered his inaugural lecture — titled “The Consensual Hallucination” — as a reflection on cinema, memory, migration, and the human experience. He also declared that “Mexico is a visual powerhouse because our culture has always converted images into a way of explaining the world,” and paid tribute to key figures in Mexican cinema history.
Earlier that week, González Iñárritu appeared at the Cineteca Nacional Chapultepec to mark the 25th anniversary of Amores perros. In conversation with writer Wendy Guerra, the director delivered a candid critique of the modern film industry. He lamented that today’s productions are dominated by marketing teams and financiers who study every detail in advance — the poster, the on-set photographs, the tie-in publications — leaving little room for spontaneity or risk. Reflecting on Amores perros, he said the film was made entirely in the present tense, without any thought for the future, and that this was precisely its strength: the great problem of today, he argued, is that things are created with the result already in mind.
In an interview with El País, Iñárritu also addressed the difficulties of inhabiting two worlds: he has for years mostly worked and lived in the United States (with many other Mexican film luminaries also living abroad, like Alfonso Cuaron (London), and Guillermo del Toro (Toronto/Los Angeles)) which he said can make some people in Mexico suspicious of him. But “the further away you are, the more Mexican you are; not in a nationalist sense, rather in affections, in the perspective it gives you. Your roots are in the air. You miss the land in a particular way.”
Sheinbaum Reaches Out To Mexico’s Intellectual Diaspora
It isn’t just Mexico’s cinematic talent that is drawn to live and work abroad. Sending Mexico’s business and political elite to finish their education in the US or Europe is a long-established tradition, exemplified by former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was so frequently described as “Harvard-educated” in global press that it has become a national inside joke.
President Sheinbaum, who herself studied at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, launched the “Cátedras de la Diáspora Mexicana” — or “Mexican Diaspora Research Chairs” — on May 25 as an initiative to formally reconnect Mexican researchers living abroad with the country’s academic and scientific ecosystem. The programme responds to requests from hundreds of diaspora scientists who want to stay engaged with their home country without necessarily returning permanently.
Selected researchers will receive formal recognition within the National System of Researchers (SNII) and an annual mobility stipend of 45,000 pesos to travel to Mexico for academic activities — advising students, leading seminars, or collaborating on research projects. Remote participation (distance teaching, mentoring) is also explicitly supported. Financial support is available but not mandatory for those who don’t need it. Applicants must hold a doctorate, be linked to a scientific or humanities research project in Mexico, and submit a letter of acceptance from a Mexican university or research centre. Current SNII membership is not required.
Science Secretary Rosaura Ruiz noted that more than 16,000 Mexicans with doctorates are conducting research in the United States alone, and the government is working to build a comprehensive directory of this community. She invoked Nobel laureate Mario Molina — the Mexican chemist recognised in 1995 for his ozone research — as emblematic of what diaspora scientists can contribute to global knowledge.
The programme also fits into a broader international science strategy promoted by the administration, announced days after Sheinbaum signed a modernised Mexico–EU cooperation agreement on May 22, in which science and technology collaboration is a key pillar. Meanwhile, government scholarships for study abroad have more than doubled since 2024, with 2,000 additional grants planned for 2026.
The Works of a 20th-Century “Literary Mystery” On Exhibit
The National Museum of Anthropology has inaugurated two simultaneous exhibitions dedicated to the German-Mexican writer B. Traven: Tierra de primavera: B. Traven en la selva lacandona and Centenario de El barco de la muerte. Both shows are on view through August 30, in the Media Luna and first-floor Gallery of the museum.
B. Traven (1882–1969) was a novelist, photographer, and screenwriter whose work focused on migration, labour exploitation, and indigenous communities in Mexico. His best-known titles include The Death Ship, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Macario. The adaptation of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, won three Academy Awards, while Macario (1960), directed by Roberto Gavaldón, became the first Mexican film nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and competed at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, with sales of forty million copies worldwide. In 2026, Penguin Random House is reissuing Spanish-language editions of The Death Ship, Macario, and Canasta de cuentos to mark the centennial.
Traven has been called “the literary mystery of the 20th century.” He used at least ten aliases over his lifetime, among them Traven Torsvan, Hal Croves, and Ret Marut — a German stage actor, journalist, and anarchist who edited a radical newspaper called Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brickburner) and was a participant in the short-lived Bavarian Council Republic of 1919. Sentenced to death after its collapse, he narrowly escaped execution and eventually made his way to Mexico in the early 1920s, where he reinvented himself as a writer. Traven himself famously deflected all biographical inquiry, writing: “The creative person should have no other biography than his works.” He was granted Mexican citizenship in 1951 and died in Mexico City in 1969. On his deathbed, he reportedly confided to his wife Rosa Elena Luján that he was indeed Marut — a disclosure she honoured by keeping secret until after his death.
The shows mark the centennial of The Death Ship, first published in 1926, as well as the hundredth anniversary of Traven’s first trip to Chiapas as a photographer on a scientific expedition organised by the Mexican government. Timothy Heyman, director of the B. Traven Estate, and former Mexico Country Head of the Barings Bank, (and former boss of Miranda’s Damian Fraser), said the aim is to broaden the public’s view of the author beyond his literary work — presenting him also as explorer and photographer. Traven left behind an archive of some 3,000 photographs, a largely unknown dimension of his legacy.
The Chiapas journey, initially expected to be routine, turned into an extended stay that profoundly shaped Traven’s writing. It produced the anthropological book Tierra de primavera, with 64 pages of photographs, and later inspired the six-novel Mahogany Cycle. His stepdaughter Malú Montes de Oca Luján de Heyman noted that the books reflect his evolution from a passionate advocate for the European working class to the same role on behalf of indigenous peoples in southern Mexico.
The Media Luna gallery features original photographs taken by Traven, personal objects, his camera, and documents from his expeditions. The first-floor Gallery displays the original pencil-written English manuscript of The Death Ship, a photographic album the author donated to the museum, a compass, a typewriter, and footage from the 1959 German film adaptation of the novel.
While Traven’s identity was shrouded in mystery for decades, his stepdaughter Malú considers the exhibition effectively puts that to rest: “The subtext of the exhibition is that the ‘mystery’ has been resolved,” she said, adding that everything about the author’s life is now known, conveyed implicitly through the chronological materials on display, even if others may beg to differ (some still disputing his exact birth name and place).
Chatter Box
Chichén Itzá Reopens, Resentments Remain: Chichén Itzá was closed for roughly two weeks in late May following a dispute between the INAH and the Maya community of Pisté, whose artisans, vendors, and tour guides had worked at the site for decades. The conflict centred on the INAH’s push to redirect all visitor access through the new CATVI facility — part of the Tren Maya project — without prior consultation with the community. The Maya community accused the government of attempting to forcibly displace them, filed a court injunction citing violations of their indigenous rights, and described the closures as economic strangulation. The INAH framed the reopening as part of an orderly visitor management strategy. The site reopened on June 1 after the INAH agreed to let the community manage a local economic corridor, though the legal dispute remains ongoing.
Reducing Red Tape for Artwork: Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) has published new regulations in the official gazette to simplify and digitalise bureaucratic procedures related to artistic monuments and works of art. Four separate permit procedures for interventions in artistic monuments and buildings with artistic value have been consolidated into a single request form. Under the new framework, the maximum response times are 30 business days for major interventions and 20 business days for minor ones. Export permits for plastic works declared as artistic or historical monuments — for both individuals and legal entities — have also been merged into one digital procedure, with a maximum response time of 30 business days.
The agreement also eliminates two procedures entirely: the authorisation for civil associations linked to heritage preservation, and the import/export notice for 20th and 21st century artworks. INBAL also clarified that it may no longer request documents issued by the institution itself, nor impose requirements beyond those established in the new regulations.
A Rivera-Kahlo Treasure Trove Returns: After more than six years of closure, the Museo Dolores Olmedo — located at the historic Hacienda La Noria in Xochimilco, Mexico City — reopened its doors to the public on May 30.
The museum’s reopening showcases its renowned collection, including 98 works by Diego Rivera and 26 by Frida Kahlo, displayed with new exhibition design and display. Visitors are first welcomed into the personal rooms where collector Dolores Olmedo lived, recreated as she decorated them, with artworks, objects, documents, and photographs of her friends and loved ones. The Frida Kahlo works, including the masterpiece La columna rota (1944), had recently returned from an exhibition in Houston. A new room dedicated to Olmedo’s friendship with Rivera has also been added.
The reopening was celebrated by the neighbourhood and seen as the triumphant culmination of a long dispute over the future of one of the country’s most important cultural institutions.
From Tepito To Cannes To Tepito: Para los contrincantes, the Mexican short that won the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes, is now seeking a screening in the Tepito neighbourhood of Mexico City where its story was born. Argentine director Federico Luis discovered the film’s subject unexpectedly while making research trips to Mexico City for another project. Accompanying writer Mario Bellatin through the city one day, he ended up at a boxing event in Tepito — and was surprised to find that the fighters were children, not adults. One young boxer, Damián, captivated him and became the film’s protagonist.
The short uses boxing as a metaphor for something deeper: the moment when a child internalises the expectations adults project onto them, and begins constructing an identity around them. The film also engages with the construction of masculinity. Producer Elena Fortes credited the film’s avoidance of cliché and neighbourhood stereotypes to involving the Tepito community directly, both in front of and behind the camera. It is only the third Mexican short to win the Palme d’Or, following earlier wins by Carlos Carrera and Elisa Miller.
For the filmmakers, the most meaningful premiere is still ahead. “The one we’re most looking forward to is the one in Tepito,” said the director. “We want to present the film in the place where it was born, alongside all the people who accompanied us during the process.”
Culture Conversation: Tatiana Bilbao with Monocle on Design
This podcast episode starts with a jaunt through contemporary Mexican design, from the artisanal to the industrial, before moving into an interview with renowned architect Tatiana Bilbao. “I am one of those architects, who many others think is very innocent,” she says, “that thinks that architecture has a huge power. I understand its power.”
Culture Outing: World Cup Nostalgia
México 86 (Netflix)
Instead of going out, maybe avoid the crowds and immerse yourself in World Cup mania from your sofa. Gabriel Ripstein’s satirical México: 86, starring Diego Luna, Karla Souza, and Daniel Giménez Cacho (as Emilio Azcárraga), has been described as the perfect appetiser for the main event, chronicling the story of a fictional (yet familiar) official and his unscrupulous obsession with securing Mexico its second World Cup.
Los Mundiales de México (Capital 21)
This documentary series on Capital 21 about Mexico’s previous World Cups includes extensive original footage and interviews with academics, journalists and participants.