Sheinbaum Makes Home Office Mandatory in Mexico City for World Cup Inauguration Day

Mexico City is clearing the streets for the World Cup opening match, and that means everyone is working from home. President Claudia Sheinbaum made it official on June 8, publishing a decree that mandates remote work for all federal public administration workers on June 11, the day the FIFA 2026 World Cup kicks off in the capital.

The decree, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federacion, is a full-court press to free up roads and public transport for what promises to be a chaotic, beautiful, and probably traffic-ridden opening day. And if you think this only applies to government desk jockeys, think again.

Every school in Mexico City, public and private, from kindergarten through university, must switch to distance learning on June 11. No exceptions. That means millions of students will be logging into Zoom, Google Classroom, or whatever platform their teachers can scramble together. Parents, you have been warned. Yes, the pandemic flashbacks are real.

For the city's federal workers, the home office rule is mandatory. If you work for a federal agency or government entity inside CDMX, you are not coming into the office. Period. The idea is simple: keep millions of people off the streets and out of the metro so the World Cup crowds can actually move around.

Private companies and social sector organizations are being "exhorted" to follow the same playbook. That is a polite way of saying the government really wants them to, but cannot force them. Smart businesses will probably get ahead of this and tell their employees to stay home anyway. Nobody wants to be the boss who made everyone commute through a World Cup traffic nightmare.

The decree covers the entire Mexico City area, which means this is not just about the Estadio Azteca neighborhood. It is a citywide push to reduce congestion. Public transport will be stretched thin enough without adding the usual 9-to-5 rush.

The World Cup is finally here

This is the moment Mexico City has been waiting for. The 2026 World Cup is co-hosted by Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and CDMX is hosting the opening match at the legendary Estadio Azteca, a venue that has already hosted two World Cup finals. The city is going all-in. Mandatory work from home. School closures. Streets cleared. This is not a drill.

For locals, June 11 will feel like a weird hybrid of a national holiday and a snow day, minus the snow. Families will crowd around TVs. Bars and cantinas will fill up by breakfast time. The city will buzz with that specific energy that only comes when the world's biggest sporting event lands in your backyard.

Is the home office mandate extreme? Sure. But Mexico City knows what is coming. Traffic in CDMX is legendary for all the wrong reasons, and adding hundreds of thousands of World Cup visitors on top of the daily commute would be a recipe for gridlock. The government is making a choice: inconvenience the office workers for one day so the city can show up for the tournament.

And honestly, who is complaining? Getting told to stay home and watch the match is not exactly a hardship. The ones who will really feel it are the teachers trying to set up last-minute remote classes and the IT departments scrambling to keep VPNs from melting. But for everyone else, June 11 is shaping up to be one of the most memorable workdays in recent memory.

Just make sure your Wi-Fi holds up. You are going to need it.