What time is Mexico v South Africa?
Opening match of World Cup 2026 kicks off in Mexico tonight
Mexico are hosting South Africa in the first game of the World Cup 2026 on Thursday, June 11, which will kick off after an opening ceremony.
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The 48-team tournament is the biggest in history and the first to be played across three countries, with the US and Canada also co-hosting over the five weeks.
Mexico and South Africa kick off a big weekend of football, with three opening ceremonies being held before all of the initial games in the host nations.
England and Scotland will both get their campaigns underway next week.
The game is a direct rematch of the 2010 World Cup opener, when the teams drew 1-1 in Johannesburg's Soccer City, but this time the Central American nation will have home advantage at the Estadio Azteca.
This will be the third World Cup with games played in Mexico, the country having hosted the 1970 and 1986 tournaments.
They will be hoping to reach the quarter-finals for the first time since that latter tournament and have called up 40-year-old goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa for his sixth finals.
Manager Javier Aguirre is expecting a tournament of attrition. He said: “At a World Cup, the team that plays the prettiest football does not always win. The team that knows how to compete does.”
This is South Africa's fourth World Cup, and they have never been beyond the group stage, narrowly missing out in both 2002 and 2010, when they hosted the finals.
Manager Hugo Broos is being realistic about their chances this time around. “It’s something we need, to play against such teams," he said.
"We will learn a lot and then we will see. In football anything is possible. We will fight like we have done in recent years.”