With the FIFA World Cup opener at Estadio Azteca scheduled for June 11, Mexico City's government has put crews on extended shifts at the three biggest infrastructure sites that need to be ready, partially or fully, by tournament day. The major fronts are Metro Line 1, the AICM airport apron expansion and the Calzada de Tlalpan pedestrian-and-cycle corridor that links the central city to the Azteca neighbourhood.
Metro Line 1, the city's oldest and most heavily used route, is operating in segments after a sweeping renovation that began in 2022 and slipped twice. City transport secretary Jesús Antonio Esteva said the full line would reopen by mid-November, but the segment between Pantitlán and Salto del Agua — which covers the central transfer to Line 2 — would run on extended hours through the World Cup with new CAF rolling stock.
The Zócalo–Tenochtitlán station on Line 2 remains closed for the seismic-retrofit work that began after the 2024 tremors, and Esteva said it would not reopen until October. The closure has forced the city to route additional buses through the central plaza, where the formal accountability event President Claudia Sheinbaum had originally planned for May 31 has now been moved to the Monumento a la Revolución to clear the area for the tournament.
On Calzada de Tlalpan, the two-kilometre pedestrian and cycle corridor designed to handle World Cup matchday foot traffic between metro stops and Estadio Azteca is on track to open in late May, mayor Clara Brugada said at a Wednesday press event. The project narrows car lanes on a major arterial and includes nineteen new traffic signal phases tuned for matchday volumes.
AICM airport is the most visible problem. The terminal expansion that was supposed to be ready for the tournament was descoped to a partial apron upgrade in late 2025 after cost overruns, and arriving passengers continue to face hour-long immigration queues at peak. The transport ministry has hired four hundred additional INM officers on temporary contracts and reopened twenty mothballed booths.
Brugada, in office since October, has framed the World Cup as a stress test for Plan México, the federal industrial policy framework that has channelled large parts of its 2025-2026 budget into the capital and into the two other Mexican host cities, Monterrey and Guadalajara. The opening match at Azteca, between Mexico and a CONCACAF qualifier to be confirmed by FIFA, will be the first World Cup fixture played at the venue since 1986.