With the 2026 men’s Football World Cup, which will be hosted jointly by Mexico, the United States, and Canada, the distinctive sporting culture of Latin America is once again coming into focus. While football plays a central role in many countries across the region, sporting life is far more diverse: athletics, boxing, baseball, gymnastics, and numerous other disciplines also have long and vibrant traditions. Sports event posters make this diversity visible and demonstrate the extent to which sport has always been part of public representation and national identity.
The Special Collections of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (IAI Ibero-American Institute) preserve not only a large number of valuable maps, films, photographs, sound recordings, personal papers and manuscripts, newspaper clippings, and institutional archives, but also an extraordinary Art Prints and Illustrations Archive and Poster Collection. Among its treasures are approximately 25 posters related to sporting events in Latin America, primarily from Mexico and dating from the 1940s and 1950s. These vividly colored prints show how sport was presented at the time as a modern mass spectacle through dynamic compositions featuring wrestlers, runners, flags, and a visual language that combines movement and progress. At the same time, they reflect the graphic style of an era in which posters served as important vehicles for information, advertising, and national symbolism.
The subjects represented in this collection cover a broad range of competitions and public events, from national tournaments to international contests. For researchers, they constitute a valuable source for the study of sports history, cultural history, and visual culture. In particular, their graphic design provides insights into the spirit of the age in mid-twentieth-century Mexico.
Sports as a Political Event
Long before the XIX Olympic Games held in Mexico City in 1968, the country was already organizing major sporting events. Some of the posters in the collection, for example, originate from the II Juegos Deportivos Nacionales de la Revolución (II National Sports Games of the Revolution), a series of competitions in different disciplines organized in Mexico as part of the official and political celebrations of the Mexican Revolution. The first events in this series were promoted by the Mexican government in 1930 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.
Other posters advertise the 1954 Central American and Caribbean Games held in Mexico. This event has taken place every four years for nearly a century now and, in its most recent editions, has included more than 30 sports disciplines. Mexico is the only country that has participated continuously in every edition since the inaugural games held in Mexico City in 1926. It has also hosted the games on four occasions (1926, 1954, 1990, and 2014). The collection furthermore includes posters related to motor racing, softball, professional wrestling, and even greyhound racing.
Access to the Sports Posters is currently being prepared
Following their acquisition, the sports posters were initially grouped by subject. They are currently being catalogued within the IAI’s Special Collections and will soon be available to the research community and the general public through the Institute’s online catalogue (external link, opens in a new window). Like other holdings in the IAI’s Special Collections, this poster collection will be available for consultation and use upon request. Inquiries may be directed to the IAI Poster Collection.
With this collection, the IAI is expanding access to holdings that support both research and thematic exploration. The Institute’s Poster Collection comprises approximately 6,450 posters and placards covering a wide range of subjects. It exemplifies the diversity of the IAI’s Special Collections and invites visitors to view the Institute as a space for visual, historical, and cultural research. Collections such as this open up new perspectives on Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal, and make the Special Collections one of the defining pillars of the IAI’s profile.
In addition, the Film Collection includes around 50 DVDs on football in Latin America. The Institute’s Image Archive also preserves more than 70 photographs of plans and designs for the sports facilities of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
