48 Nations: Cabo Verde. The World Cup Didn’t Come to Them. They’d Already Been Here for 200 Years.
The Blue Sharks stunned Spain, drew with Uruguay, and fell to Argentina in extra time. But the real story of Cabo Verde at the 2026 World Cup was never in Miami. It was in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where a 200-year-old diaspora finally got to watch its country on the biggest stage in soccer.
On a Tuesday in early June, the international arrivals terminal at Boston’s Logan Airport was a sea of blue. Dozens of Cape Verdean-Americans had driven hours through the Boston traffic to catch a glimpse of their national team arriving in the United States for the World Cup. They held flags and scarves and selfie sticks. They sang. When an airport official told them the players would not emerge from customs but would board a bus directly from inside, the anticipation turned to disappointment. The crowd frowned, briefly, one by one, as the news spread. Then they sang again. Cabo Verde had come home. That is how you pronounce it, not Cape Verde, as one 65-year-old fan outside the stadium in Miami would later explain to a reporter, with a satisfied smile: Cahbo Verday. The country’s official name has been the Portuguese Cabo Verde since 2013. The diaspora has been in New England since the 18th century.
Cabo Verde is a nation of ten islands in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 350 miles off the west coast of Africa. Its population is approximately 600,000. By land area it is the second-smallest nation to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, after Curaçao. It has never before competed at a men’s World Cup. And it has a diaspora in the United States, concentrated in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, that numbers somewhere between 70,000 and 90,000 people, depending on who is counting, many of whom have family connections to the islands going back two centuries. When Cabo Verde drew 0-0 with Spain in their first-ever World Cup match, approximately 8,000 of those people watched on a giant screen at the Providence Fan Zone. The islands are about 3,800 miles away. The diaspora has been here so long that New England is sometimes called the 10th island.
HOW THEY GOT HERE
Cabo Verde World Cup 2026: The 200-Year Journey That Made This Moment
Cape Verdeans first arrived in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the 18th and 19th centuries as whalers. Many joined Portuguese whaling crews to escape famine and drought on the islands, and those ships brought them to New Bedford and Providence, the epicenter of the American whaling industry. New Bedford, Massachusetts, was at the time one of the wealthiest cities in the United States, and the Cape Verdeans who settled there established what would become the oldest and largest Cape Verdean community in the country. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, published in 1851, includes a Cape Verdean character named Daggoo.
A second wave of immigration came in the second half of the 20th century, as the United States loosened immigration rules and economic hardship on the archipelago pushed more Cape Verdeans to leave. Between the two waves, the communities in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island grew deep roots. Brockton, Massachusetts has an estimated 20,000 Cape Verdean residents. Fall River. New Bedford. Pawtucket. Providence. These are the cities where the Blue Sharks’ World Cup run was felt most personally, because these are the cities where the families of the players’ homeland have lived for generations.
“Cape Verdeans were the first Africans to voluntarily emigrate to the United States,” said Joe DaMoura, executive director of the Cape Verdean Museum in Pawtucket, which was mounting an exhibit on 250 years of Cape Verdean history in the US during the tournament. The qualification for the World Cup, he said, gave the community something it had not had before: the world’s attention.
The day Cabo Verde qualified for the World Cup, last October, with a 3-0 win over Eswatini, Jorge Monteiro was in Pawtucket. He was born in Cabo Verde and came to the United States later in life. He arrived at the sendoff event for the Blue Sharks at Centreville Bank Stadium wrapped in two different Cape Verdean flags: off his right shoulder, the first flag the country adopted after gaining independence from Portugal in 1975. Off his left, the current blue, red, and white flag in use since 1992. “The day Cape Verde qualified for the World Cup,” he said, “is the second most important day in our history, after getting our independence.”
“The day Cape Verde qualified for the World Cup is the second most important day in our history, after getting our independence.”
Jorge Monteiro · Cape Verdean-American · Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Cabo Verde World Cup 2026: The Blue Sharks on the Field
The Blue Sharks were drawn into Group H alongside Spain, Uruguay, and Saudi Arabia. On paper, it was the most brutal possible introduction to a first World Cup. Spain had won the tournament in 2010 and were among the favorites for 2026. Uruguay are one of the most experienced World Cup nations on earth. Cabo Verde, making their debut, had a squad assembled from the Portuguese, French, and Cape Verdean domestic leagues, plus a scattering of players from other European clubs.
In their first-ever World Cup match, played on June 15 in Miami, Cabo Verde drew 0-0 with Spain. Goalkeeper Vozinha, 40 years old and among the oldest players at the tournament, made a series of diving saves that became one of the most-shared images of the tournament’s opening weekend. He has spent his entire career in the lower divisions of Portuguese football. On this day, he was the best goalkeeper in the world for 90 minutes.
Against Uruguay on June 21, also in Miami, Kevin Pina scored Cabo Verde’s first-ever World Cup goal in the 21st minute. It was the 21st minute of their second match, their first goal in World Cup history, and the stadium erupted in a way that neutral fans understand: a small team scoring for the first time on the biggest stage is one of the sport’s purest moments. Cabo Verde drew 2-2. They then drew 0-0 with Saudi Arabia to finish second in Group H and advance to the Round of 32, becoming the smallest nation in World Cup history to reach the knockout stage.
In the Round of 32, they faced Argentina and Lionel Messi. They lost 3-2 in extra time. Sidny Lopes Cabral scored a wonder goal, a long-range strike that went in off the underside of the crossbar, that will appear in World Cup highlight montages for decades. Vozinha said afterward that the team’s performances had “dignified Cabo Verde as a national team in most parts of the world.” He is right. That is not a small thing.
——— THE CULTURE ———
WHAT THE WORLD STARTED SEARCHING
Cachupa, Morna, and What People Started Looking Up When Cabo Verde Stunned Spain
When Cabo Verde drew with Spain, something happened beyond the result. People started searching. What is Cabo Verde? Where is it? What do they eat? What is their music? Doreys Vega, a 33-year-old Florida resident originally from Cabo Verde, noticed it immediately. “With interest in the country now on the rise,” she said, “people are looking up cachupa.” Cachupa is Cabo Verde’s national dish: a slow-cooked stew of corn and beans, eaten at any time of day, made rich with meat in its Cachupa Rica version and kept simple in its Cachupa Pobre version. It is a dish of survival and adaptation, born from drought and food shortage, and it is the first thing diaspora members reach for when they want to explain their culture to someone who does not know it.
The music is morna: a genre of song from the islands that carries the specific emotional register of saudade, the Portuguese word for a longing that has no precise English translation. Cesaria Evora, the “barefoot diva” who sang morna in bare feet as a protest against poverty and sang her way to international stardom in the 1980s and 1990s, is the most famous Cape Verdean in history. She died in 2011. At every watch party in New England during the 2026 World Cup, her music played.
New England has been so important to the Cape Verdean experience that it is sometimes called the 10th island of the archipelago. The nickname captures something real about the relationship between the islands and the diaspora: more Cape Verdeans live outside Cabo Verde than on it. The migration is so embedded in the national identity that it runs through the music, the language, the food. The barrels, packed with goods and clothing, that Cape Verdean-Americans have sent home by ship for generations have their own place in the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Genie Lomba, who co-founded Cabo Verdeans United and has spent twenty years building playgrounds and delivering soccer balls to the islands, described the smell of one of those barrels arriving at her grandmother’s house as something she carries with her to this day: “This beautiful, flowery smell. It’s the weirdest thing; it’s like used clothing… but the smell of it was just heavenly, and it’s ingrained in my brain to this day.”
The cultural specificity of Cabo Verde’s World Cup story is exactly the kind of thing the 48 Nations series was built to document. Cabo Verde is not an underdog story. It is a diaspora story. The sport was the occasion. The community was the point.
“Now, the whole world knows about Cabo Verde. That’s how you pronounce it, not Cape Verde. We do everything with a big heart and it’s there for everyone to see.”
Cape Verdean fan · Miami Stadium · July 4, 2026
0-0 with Spain. 2-2 with Uruguay. Kevin Pina’s first goal. Vozinha’s saves. Sidny Lopes Cabral’s wonder strike against Argentina. A 3-2 defeat in extra time. The smallest nation to reach the knockout stage in World Cup history.
And in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 8,000 people watching on a giant screen. In the 10th island, which has been here for 200 years, waiting for exactly this.
“We’re on the map now,” Jorge Monteiro said.
