Mexico 1968: Venues overview
Twenty-one of Mexico 1968’s 23 competition venues remain in use today, with all eight of the venues newly built for the Games still hosting sports competitions and serving high performance athletes, sports clubs and residents alike.
In all, 15 of the competition venues were existing, of which two venues have since been dismantled, as planned. A total of six of these venues were renovated in 2018, as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Games.
Four of the venues can be found at the Magdalena Mixhuca Sports Complex, the largest facility of its kind in Mexico. The complex has grown in size since the Olympic Games and has become an integral part of the city’s sporting and cultural scene hosting a large range of events including, for example, the Formula 1 race. Moreover, all the apartments in the two Olympic Villages were sold on the open market after the Games, providing social housing for the city.
Infrastructure used during the Olympic Games has contributed to Mexico City’s positioning as a major sporting event host. The country built on the reputation it forged in 1968 by staging what many saw as one of the best ever football World Cups just two years later and then again in 1986. The nation will stage the competition for a third time in 2026, as joint hosts with USA and Canada.
Mexico City’s Olympic facilities have welcomed a diverse range of sporting competitions in recent years. For example, the Sports Palace hosted the 2015 FIBA Americas Championships, the Olympic Pool staged the 2017 World Para Swimming Championships and the Olympic Gymnasium the World Para Powerlifting Championships that same year, while the ‘Palillo’ Athletics Stadium welcomed the UIPM 2018 Pentathlon World Championships.