With 9,500 participants, Mexico City holds world’s largest-ever soccer class

Mexico City established a Guinness World Record for the largest shot people ever connected Sunday arsenic 9,500 futbolistas filled the Zócalo arsenic portion of a bid of promotional events up of the FIFA World Cup.

The plaza successful beforehand of the National Palace served arsenic a monolithic grooming ground with enthusiastic crowds engaging successful shot drills nether the guidance of dozens of instructors. Participants kicked balls and took portion successful coordinated exercises nether the guise of promoting athletics and assemblage engagement.

While presiding implicit the planetary people alongside shot stars and erstwhile members of Mexican nationalist teams, Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada said that with this event, the superior officially “kicked disconnected the World Cup.”

Mexico City volition play big to 5 World Cup games, including the inaugural lucifer connected June 11.

Brugada, who joined participants connected the pitch, said her authorities was hoping to nonstop a connection of “no to war, yes to peace,” saying, “Today we scored a extremity against hatred, inequality and indifference.”

¡La #CiudadMásDeportiva hizo historia!

El #Mundial2026 está cada vez más cerca: ¡#LaPelotaVuelveACasa! pic.twitter.com/xz9q1Yz58M

— Clara Brugada Molina (@ClaraBrugadaM) March 15, 2026

Among the shot celebrities participating were erstwhile nationalist squad players Braulio Luna (1998 and 2002 World Cups), Francisco “Kikín” Fonseca (2006 World Cup), Óscar “Conejo” Pérez (2002 and 2010 World Cups), Miguel España (1986 World Cup) and Adrián Chávez (1994 World Cup), arsenic good arsenic respective members of Mexico’s 1971 Women’s World Cup squad. 

The event easy surpassed the erstwhile Guinness grounds acceptable successful Seattle successful June 2025, erstwhile a shot people brought unneurotic 1,038 participants.

Alfredo Arista Rueda, a Guinness World Records judge, confirmed that a grounds had been set, saying, “You are officially astonishing … congratulations.”

“Today we broke this large grounds … ⁠and showed that we are susceptible of achieving the bonzer and the impossible,” Brugada said aft receiving the award, adding that “soccer is simply a cosmopolitan language, a connection of bid that needs nary translation.”

This is not the archetypal clip Mexico has acceptable a Guinness World Record for an instructional class.

In 2023, Mexico City acceptable a caller grounds with a full of 30,000 registered participants successful a boxing people in the Zócalo, a assemblage that doubled the grounds it had established a twelvemonth earlier.

The shot people was portion of Mexico’s Social World Cup program that aims to bring educational, tourism and taste activities to communities crossed the country. 

The Zócalo was outfitted with artificial turf, transforming the historical abstraction into a monolithic modern shot pitch. (Mario Jasso/Cuartoscuro)

Earlier this month, 4,757 radical gathered wrong the Víctor Manuel Reyna Stadium successful Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, to signifier the world’s largest shot jersey.

A 3rd Guinness World Record effort — a monolithic collaborative soccer-themed mural — volition beryllium made successful May.

With reports from El Sol de México, Reuters, The Associated Press and El Universal