Exhibitions

Football and art: the shared emotion that anticipates the 2026 World Cup

Damián Ortega, 'Coliseum: Diagran of Time', 2017, Colección Jumex.

Carles Toribio mexico city - 31/03/26

Just months before the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Jumex Museum joins the global excitement with a proposal that transcends the sporting aspect. From March 28 to July 26, 2026, the institution presents "Football and Art. That Same Emotion ," an exhibition that proposes viewing football not only as a spectacle, but as a cultural, social, and political phenomenon of global reach.

Curated by Guillermo Santamarina, the exhibition brings together nearly one hundred works by more than 60 artists from 13 countries, including Mexico, the United States, France, Japan, and South Africa. However, beyond the numbers, what defines the exhibition is its conceptual ambition: to explore how football shapes identities, builds community, and reflects contemporary tensions such as gender and globalization.

Clotilde Jiménez, The Good Brody, 2004, private collection.

Santamarina states this forcefully, defining football as “a system of imagination and information” capable of condensing the emotions and contradictions of contemporary society. In this sense, the exhibition becomes a space for reflection where the game reveals itself as a critical and deliberative field.

The exhibition showcases a wide variety of formats—painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video—ranging from historical works to pieces commissioned specifically for this occasion. Among the most prominent names are internationally renowned artists such as Jeff Koons, alongside key figures in the Latin American art scene like Graciela Iturbide, Francis Alÿs, Damián Ortega, and Juan O'Gorman, whose work , Portrait of the Child César Martino Servín, lends a historical and symbolic dimension to the collection.

Graciela Iturbide, Untitled, Rome, Italy, 2007, courtesy of the artist.

The exhibition also stands out for its museographic approach, designed by architect Mauricio Rocha, who transforms the space into a reinterpretation of the football universe. One of the most significant points is located in the museum plaza, where the Tercerunquinto collective presents Tribunas (2026) : an installation constructed with seats recovered from the Azteca Stadium, adorned with plaques bearing the names of Mexican footballers. The piece functions as an emotional archive that connects memory, identity, and sport.