Published On 11 Jun 202611 Jun 2026<\/p>\n
Fireworks, a sweeping light show and performances by Shakira, Burna Boy and J Balvin opened the 2026 World Cup before more than 80,000 fans at a revamped Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, co-hosts Mexico kicked off the expanded 48-team football tournament by playing South Africa at the steep concrete arena, officially renamed Mexico City Stadium but still widely known as Azteca.<\/p>\n
The ground, which staged World Cup openers in 1970 and 1986, has now become the first venue to host the tournament\u2019s curtain-raiser three times, as Mexico shares hosting duties with the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n
Inside, fans waved flags, sang and filmed the star-studded prematch show on their phones as the global spotlight returned to one of football\u2019s most storied venues.<\/p>\n
Outside, demonstrations broke out near key transport routes and fan zones, with protesters denouncing the cost of staging the World Cup, tight security cordons around working-class neighbourhoods and what they say is disruption to communities living in the stadium\u2019s shadow.<\/p>\n
Police and security forces ringed surrounding streets and funnelled supporters through checkpoints, as Mexico City began a month of football under intense scrutiny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published On 11 Jun 202611 Jun 2026 Fireworks, a sweeping light show and performances by Shakira, Burna Boy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[218,4659,59,8911,1735,50,101,56,54,55,58033],"class_list":["post-634184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-football","tag-gallery","tag-gb","tag-latin-america","tag-mexico","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}