RETA (Red Trinacional Antimundial) is an emerging activist and free-media network that brings together independent journalists, media platforms, community groups, collectives, and grassroots organizers opposing the social and economic impacts of the 2026 FIFA World Cup across the Americas. Although decentralized and intentionally low-profile, RETA reflects a growing trinational alignment of actors who argue that mega-events such as the World Cup intensify gentrification, displacement, securitization, and urban inequality in host cities.
At its core, RETA is guided by a straightforward premise: the World Cup is not only a sporting spectacle but also a large-scale urban megaproject with material consequences for working-class neighbourhoods. Participants highlight rising rents, tourism-driven redevelopment, and the redirection of public resources toward stadiums and infrastructure that often serve private interests. In response, the network focuses on amplifying the voices of communities frequently excluded from decision-making processes shaping their cities in the lead-up to 2026, as well as documenting events and protests that are often underrepresented, distorted, or selectively framed in mainstream media.
The term “trinational” reflects RETA’s cross-border orientation. While the network is most visible in Mexico – particularly in Mexico City, where anti–Mundial/FIFA street actions and symbolic “retas antimundialistas” have taken place – its concerns extend across all three host countries: Mexico, the United States, and Canada. RETA organizers emphasize that the structural pressures associated with the World Cup are shared across borders and therefore require coordinated forms of resistance.
RETA’s media practice centres on documenting creative and community-based forms of action. These include street interventions reframed as spontaneous football matches, neighbourhood assemblies, and public teach-ins. Through these practices, the network seeks to contest dominant narratives that frame the World Cup as an unqualified public good, instead foregrounding the lived experiences of residents facing eviction, heightened policing, and growing economic precarity in the context of large-scale urban redevelopment.
While RETA is not a formal organization with hierarchical leadership or official spokespersons, its strength lies in its horizontal structure and transnational solidarity. It connects students, tenants, workers, and local collectives through a shared commitment to defending neighbourhoods from speculative development and state–corporate urban partnerships.
The network describes itself and invites participation in its coordination process:
Falta muy poco. El espectáculo está por desplegarse, pero también la desigualdad, los desplazamientos, la explotación laboral y el silencio sobre las historias que no venden. Frente a eso, periodistas, medios, comunicadores populares, creadores de contenido y organizaciones de base de México, Estados Unidos y Canadá estamos tejiendo una red para contar lo que no quieren que se vea.
Nos reunimos este sábado 6 de junio. Para sumar voces, definir una agenda alternativa y coordinar acciones de cobertura colaborativa durante el Mundial. Si haces comunicación desde cualquier trinchera – medio, colectivo, plataforma o territorio – este espacio es para ti.
Escríbenos para recibir el enlace de la videollamada.
IG / https://www.instagram.com/retaalmundial/
X / https://x.com/RetaAlMundial
The 2026 World Cup is just days away. Before the kickoff and the commercial narrative takes over, we are meeting to finalize a trinational network for critical, grassroots-driven coverage.
Time is short. The spectacle is about to begin, but so are inequality, displacement, labor exploitation, and the silencing of stories that don’t sell. In response, journalists, media workers, grassroots communicators, content creators, and community organizations from Mexico, the United States, and Canada are building a network to tell the stories they don’t want to be seen.
We meet this Saturday, June 6. To bring together voices, define an alternative agenda, and coordinate collaborative coverage actions during the World Cup. If you do communication work from any space – media, collective, platform, or territory – this is for you.
Message us to get the video call link.
IG / https://www.instagram.com/retaalmundial/
X / https://x.com/RetaAlMundial
