Forty years. One return.

Seven thousand years ago, the first cities on earth rose from the silt between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Writing was invented here. The wheel. The first laws. Iraq is not a young country. It is one of the oldest stories humanity ever told itself.

In June 1986, the Lions of Mesopotamia walked onto a World Cup pitch in Mexico for the first time. They went home with a memory, and a country quietly carrying it. The wait that followed lasted forty years — through qualifiers and Asian Cups and friendlies and one heartbreak after another. Four decades of imagining the green shirt back on the biggest stage.

On 1 April 2026, in Mexico, the forty-year wait ended. A nation in the streets. A jersey, returning.