With the 2026 FIFA World Cup now underway, making Mexico the first nation in history to host the tournament three times, Netflix has timed its release of México 86 with the precision of a well-placed corner kick. The film arrives with an opening title card that cheerfully admits “some of these events did happen,” a disarming note of candor that sets the tone for everything that follows. Director Gabriel Ripstein has made a loosely fact-based satirical comedy about how Mexico secured its second World Cup hosting, back in 1986, triggered when Colombia withdraws as planned host, pushed out by political and economic turmoil.
Into that vacuum steps Martín de la Torre, a low-level employee at the Mexican Football Federation (FEMEXFUT) who spots opportunity where his superiors see chaos. Armed with audacity, a talent for schmoozing, and a flexible relationship with the truth, Martín mounts an improbable campaign to bring the tournament to Mexico, fending off better-funded rivals, including the United States. The film has no real interest in football. It is a portrait of ambition, ego, and the particular kind of hunger that drives a man to bend every rule available to him.
Two Kinds of Pride
México 86 opens with a clear sense of purpose. Martín is a dissatisfied paper-pusher, perpetually overworked and perpetually sidelined, cheating on his wife with his downstairs neighbor Susana and measuring the distance between his current life and the one he imagines for himself. Colombia’s withdrawal is the crack in the wall he has been waiting for. He leaks the federation’s bid to the press, secures the backing of Emilio Azcárraga, the powerful broadcasting mogul and Club América chairman, and maneuvers his way to the FIFA conference in Zurich, where Mexico ultimately beats out the United States for hosting rights.
That Zurich campaign is the film’s most energetic and satisfying stretch, arriving roughly 40 minutes in. The early victory, however, creates a structural problem. After Mexico is confirmed as host, the film shifts register, following Martín through tournament preparations, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, FIFA’s resulting pressure to relocate the Cup, and eventually his personal unraveling. The story extends past 1986 itself, a choice that will disorient viewers who expected the hosting bid to remain the central spine.
The thematic ambition is genuinely interesting. Ripstein is circling the gap between national and personal pride, and Martín lives in that gap. Mexico’s football identity had been battered for years, marked by poor results and missed qualifications, and the film asks how much of Martín’s drive is genuine solidarity and how much is self-promotion dressed in patriotic colors. There is no clean answer, and Ripstein deserves credit for sitting with that ambiguity.
The 1985 earthquake functions as a pivot point, exposing the opportunism underneath the national-hero posturing, and the film uses it well symbolically. A sharper script would have pressed harder on those implications. The tension between a systemic critique and a character comedy never quite resolves, and that unresolved quality is the film’s central dramatic frustration.
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The Performance That Holds the Film Together
Diego Luna is doing a lot of work here, and he does most of it beautifully. His Martín is a man in perpetual motion, shifting persona from room to room, deploying charm like a tool, always operating from a place of insecure confidence. Luna plays the underlying desperation without letting it swamp the surface energy, which is a genuinely difficult balance to maintain across 95 minutes.
Martín is not built for sympathy. He lies to colleagues, cheats on his wife, manipulates superiors, and uses national tragedy as a career opportunity. Luna finds the roguish magnetism that keeps you watching without softening those edges. The limitation, and it is a real one, is structural: the script rarely gives Luna a moment of stillness, so Martín stays at performance-pitch throughout, a surface of high energy without the pockets of vulnerability that might make him truly stick.
Daniel Giménez Cacho as Emilio Azcárraga is the film’s best supporting presence. His scenes with Luna generate the sharpest tension in the picture, two large egos in uneasy alliance, each calculating the other’s value in real time. Karla Souza brings intelligence and warmth to Susana, and her gradual disillusionment with Martín lands harder than most of the film’s dramatic beats. She functions as a kind of audience surrogate, drawn in by the same charisma, and eventually asking the same questions.
Style Over Substance, By Design
Ripstein’s 2015 debut 600 Miles was a spare, austere cartel drama, and México 86 sits at a conspicuous distance from that register. The filmmaking here is fluid, polished, and deliberately light on its feet. The cinematography operates in a desaturated, sandy palette that evokes the early 1980s without the usual nostalgia-soaked glow, and the production design has a worn, lived-in quality that feels grounded rather than merely costumed. A kitsch Latin pop soundtrack supplies the period texture and keeps the tone buoyant.
The film moves with confidence through its first half, and Ripstein is clearly comfortable as a stylist. The structural challenge, compressing over a decade of events into roughly 95 minutes, is a tonal problem as much as a temporal one. By choosing to play the corruption as breezy, the film opts out of the sharper, more unsettling satire that the material could support.
The story has real teeth, and Ripstein keeps them politely covered. The result is consistently watchable and periodically sharp, a film that rewards viewers with existing knowledge of Mexican football politics and leaves more casual audiences with the sense that a richer version of this story exists somewhere just off-screen.
México 86 is a satirical comedy-drama that was officially released on June 5, 2026. The film explores Mexico’s audacious, against-all-odds bid to host the 1986 World Cup after Colombia withdrew, depicting the blend of pure Mexican ingenuity and underhanded political maneuvering that made it happen. Viewers can watch the movie exclusively on Netflix, which handles its worldwide distribution.
Where to Watch México 86 Online
Full Credits
Title: México 86
Distributor: Netflix
Release date: June 5, 2026
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes
Director: Gabriel Ripstein
Writers: Francisco Javier Gonzalez, Daniel Krauze, Luis Reséndiz, Gabriel Ripstein
Producers and Executive Producers: Nicolas Atlan, Jonathan Bouzali, Maria Jose Delgado, Sidonie Dumas, Christian Gabela, Agustin Gutierrez, Joceline Hernandez, Diego Luna, Santiago Marcos, Gabriel Ripstein
Cast: Diego Luna, Karla Souza, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Memo Villegas, Genevieve Fleming, Davor Tomic, Frank Crudele, Andrés De León, Álvaro Guerrero, Diana Sedano, Osmar Lomas, Kornel Doman, Roberto Martinez
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Barnard Steele
Editors: Maximiliano Gómez, Javier Vázquez Cervantes
Composer: Javier Nuño
The Review
México 86
México 86 is a well-timed, stylishly assembled satire that coasts on Diego Luna's considerable charisma and Ripstein's polished direction. The premise is rich and the thematic ideas are genuinely sharp, but the film pulls its punches too often, choosing breezy entertainment over the biting critique the material invites. It entertains, and then it dissolves.
PROS
- Diego Luna's magnetic, layered performance
- Sharp visual style and assured period detail
- Giménez Cacho and Souza in strong supporting turns
- Genuinely interesting thematic territory around pride and corruption
CONS
- Loses structural momentum after the Zurich sequence
- Script keeps the protagonist at surface level
- Satire lacks real teeth
- Rewards insiders more than general audiences
