King Felipe VI accepts Sheinbaum’s invitation to attend the World Cup in Mexico

Eduardo González King Felipe VI has officially announced that he will travel to Mexico to attend a match of the Spanish national team in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as reported by the Royal Household and confirmed by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. According to the Royal Household's announcement on Monday, Felipe VI will attend the match between Spain and Uruguay, to be played on June 26 in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The monarch thus accepts the invitations extended by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Sheinbaum's invitation was announced by the president herself last March during one of her daily morning press conferences (the "mañaneras"), in which she specified, however, that the invitation had been sent "to all countries with which Mexico has relations." The Zarzuela Palace received on February 24th the letter, dated February 3rd, inviting the King to attend the opening ceremony of the World Cup, which will take place on June 11th at the Azteca Stadium. The letter was received “with pleasure” by the Royal Household, which considered it an example of the “fraternal relationship” between the two countries. The World Cup is being jointly organized by Mexico, the United States, and Canada. During her daily press conference this Monday, the Mexican president could not confirm whether she plans to meet with the King. “I just saw the letter this morning,” she simply stated. In any case, she did recall the circumstances that led to a diplomatic crisis between her country and Spain as a result of her decision to exclude the King from the guest list for her inauguration in October 2024, for not having responded to a letter from her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in which he was urged to apologize for the Spanish conquest. The Spanish government called this decision “unacceptable” and announced it would not participate in the inauguration “at any level.” “I did not invite the King to my inauguration because there was an affront to Mexico, an affront stemming from President López Obrador’s request for an apology to the King for the abuses committed during the arrival of the Spanish and the conquest of Mexico,” the president recalled on Monday. “From then on, instead of responding individually, whether one agreed or disagreed, that letter was made public in Spain, and a campaign against President López Obrador ensued. At that time, from my perspective, it was not only an affront to a president who is very dear to the people of Mexico, but to the people of Mexico as a whole. So I decided not to invite him,” she added. However, the situation began to change on October 31, 2025, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, recalled the “pain and injustice suffered by Indigenous peoples,” which “is also part of our shared history, and we cannot deny or forget it.” Those words, which were discreetly praised by Sheinbaum, outraged the People's Party, which demanded Albares' resignation "if he does not retract them immediately." The next step came in mid-March, when the King acknowledged—during a visit to an exhibition accompanied by the Mexican ambassador, Quirino Ordaz—that there had been "much abuse" by the Spanish during the colonial period. Pedro Sánchez endorsed the Monarch's words "one hundred percent," and the leader of the People's Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, merely expressed his "pride in the Spanish legacy." The following day, Claudia Sheinbaum praised the “King’s gesture” and, around the same time, confirmed that Felipe VI had been invited to visit her country to attend the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “With the exception of some who still defend Hernán Cortés (…), the vast majority of the Spanish people are recognizing that there was a period of abuses and that they failed to civilize the uncivilized,” the Mexican president asserted on Monday, referring to the controversial recent visit to her country by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. For his part, Albares declared on Monday, during a press conference, that “His Majesty the King’s acceptance of the invitation to attend the World Cup match in Guadalajara, Mexico” is “extraordinarily positive.” “We are in a truly excellent moment in our bilateral relations in which all institutions are making efforts, starting with His Majesty the King, who is also making gestures to ensure that this relationship with the brotherly people of Mexico is what the Spanish people want,” he said.

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