PRE-ORDER Glory Country Edition: Mexico

Mexico moves in colour – in noise, in rhythm, in heat. Streets spill into plazas, conversations at taquerias stretch late into evenings, and football sits right in the middle of it all, on every screen in every bar. When the World Cup arrives here this summer, it feels like it’s coming home.

We went to Mexico to find it for ourselves – to Mexico City, Pachuca, León, Guadalajara and Monterrey – moving through a country where football shifts with the landscape: thinner air, tighter streets, louder stands, different rhythms, all part of the same thing. In Mexico City, we soaked up the atmosphere at Club América’s temporary home, Estadio Azulgrana, courtesy of Homefans, with our charismatic local guide. We took in Pachuca v Necaxa at Estadio Hidalgo, and experienced the full-on intensity of El Clásico Tapatío – the Guadalajara derby – as Atlas hosted Chivas.

Everything we saw was captured on film by Miles Myerscough-Harris (Expired Film Club), Enrique Medina and Ale Gutiérrez, giving this issue a texture that matches the places themselves. In Mexico City, where the tournament will open for a record third time, the game already feels stitched into the fabric of the city, with the Azteca standing as a colossus at the edge of town.

This issue reflects that. Juan Villoro writes on the national team with the authority of one of Mexico’s defining voices. Cris Freddi revisits 1970, the tournament that changed how football was seen. Marcela Mora y Araujo returns to 1986, a World Cup shaped as much by image as by incident, while we sat down with director Rachel Ramsay to explore the overlooked 1971 tournament – a story that refuses to stay buried. We also had the privilege of talking to living legend Hugo Sánchez to discuss his enduring impact on Mexican football.

Elsewhere, Jon Arnold guides us through the three host cities preparing for 2026, and we examine how designers created iconic visual languages for each of Mexico’s World Cups so far. With Antonio Moreno, we revisit the Cachirules scandal that he broke in the late eighties, and we step inside Mexican sports brand Charly, a sporting and manufacturing powerhouse with their headquarters in León and their hearts firmly in its football club.

In Mexico, football drifts between the everyday and the extraordinary – a constant presence that is, above all, alive.

Ships 10th June