Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has invited King Felipe VI to attend the 2026 World Cup in Mexico, as confirmed by the Royal Household. The invitation, dated February 3 and received on February 24, was made public after the monarch's statements on abuses during the Conquest of America.
The Royal Household has confirmed that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent a letter on February 3, 2026, inviting King Felipe VI to visit the country to attend a match at the World Cup, to be held from June 11 to July 19 in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The letter, received on February 24, states that the event “constitutes a propitious juncture to evoke the depth and singular character of the ties between Mexico and Spain, forged by a historical brotherhood and sustained by the shared legacy of language, culture, and collective memory full of great displays of solidarity, empathy, and a humanist vision between our peoples,” according to La Zarzuela. The Royal Household has received “with pleasure this personal invitation” within the framework of the “fraternal relationship of friendship between the two countries.”The invitation was disclosed one day after Felipe VI acknowledged, during a visit to an exhibition in Madrid on women in prehispanic cultures, that there was “much abuse and ethical controversies” in the Conquest of America. Sheinbaum described these words as a “gesture of rapprochement, a recognition of excesses, extermination that occurred during the arrival of the Spanish” and called to “continue advancing in dialogue.”The World Cup will open on June 11 in Mexico City with Mexico against South Africa, and the Spanish team will play Uruguay on June 26 in Guadalajara. Bilateral relations strained after Andrés Manuel López Obrador's 2019 letter requesting apologies for the Conquest, with no response, and the king's non-invitation to Sheinbaum's October 2024 inauguration. In November 2025, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares mentioned “pain and injustice to indigenous peoples.”
