Peru's national sport, in the sense of the one the country plays and watches most, is football. Peru has won the Copa América twice (1939 and 1975) and played at five FIFA World Cups, most recently in 2018. Peru also has a sport of its own: paleta frontón, a paddle-and-wall game that began in Lima in 1945, is played almost nowhere else, and is often described as the national sport for that reason. A third sport is women's volleyball. The "Hijas del Sol" won Olympic silver in Seoul in 1988, and for many Peruvians they are the country's finest team ever. The history below runs from the British community's Lima Cricket Club of 1859 to the league of 18 clubs that plays today.
1859 to 1901: Lima Cricket Club, the Port of Callao and the Birth of Alianza Lima
Football came to Peru in the nineteenth century with British immigrants and with Peruvians coming home from England. In 1859 the club that Lima's English immigrants had founded in 1845 as the Salón de Comercio was renamed the Lima Cricket Club, and it was organised around cricket, rugby and football. The new games caught on among Lima's upper class, but the War of the Pacific against Chile, from 1879 to 1883, stopped their growth. After the war, football spread beyond the private clubs. Lima's schools began holding small inter-school championships, and on 20 May 1897 students from several of them founded Association FBC, the first football club in Peru. In the port of Callao next door, British sailors on shore leave played against local teams, and a Lima–Callao rivalry grew up that outlasted the foreigners.
The most important result of that spread came on 15 February 1901. Working-class youths in the Chacaritas neighbourhood founded Sport Alianza, today's Alianza Lima. The club settled in the La Victoria district, and it is the oldest club still playing in Peru's top division. It plays at the Estadio Alejandro Villanueva, named after the forward who became its first great player. With 25 league titles, it is one of the two clubs that have dominated Peruvian football ever since.
1912 to 1939: A League, a Federation and Peru's First Continental Title
The Peruvian Football League was founded in 1912. Until 1921 its competitions involved only clubs from Lima and Callao, and then it fell apart in disputes between members. The Peruvian Football Federation (FPF) was formed in 1922, joined CONMEBOL in 1925 and organised a national championship from 1926. It created the national team in 1927, in time for the South American Championship that the FPF hosted at Lima's old Estadio Nacional that year. Peru lost 4–0 to Uruguay in its first match and beat Bolivia 3–2 in the second. Three years later Peru played at the first World Cup, in Uruguay in 1930, and went out in the first round.
The 1930s were the first golden era. Alianza Lima's unbeaten tour of Chile in 1935 gave rise to the Rodillo Negro, the "Black Roller", a group of players led by the forwards Alejandro Villanueva and Teodoro "Lolo" Fernández and the goalkeeper Juan Valdivieso. Fernández spent his whole career at Universitario, a club founded on 7 August 1924 by students at the National University of San Marcos. It started out as Federación Universitaria, won its first title in 1929 and has never been relegated.
The story of the 1936 Berlin Olympics is still told in Lima. Peru beat Finland 7–3, then came back from two goals down to beat Austria 4–2 after extra time. Austria protested, claiming that Peruvian fans had invaded the pitch. The organisers ordered a replay behind closed doors, and Peru was delayed on its way to the hearing and never put its case. The whole Peruvian Olympic team left Germany in protest, and Colombia's left with it. In Lima, crowds tore down an Olympic flag and stoned the German consulate. Three years later Peru hosted the 1939 South American Championship, played from 15 January to 12 February, and won it by beating Uruguay 2–1 in the deciding match, with Fernández as the tournament's top scorer. Those years also brought victory at the first Bolivarian Games in 1938.
1945 to 1964: Paleta Frontón Is Born and a New Estadio Nacional Opens
Peru's homegrown sport also comes from Lima. Paleta frontón officially dates from 1945. It developed from the Basque pelota that Spanish settlers brought over and from a local hand-ball game the English-influenced city called "handball". The court has a single concrete front wall, the frontis, 5 metres high and 6 metres wide, and a floor 12 metres long and 7.6 metres wide marked out for singles and doubles. Players strike a black rubber ball, 71 millimetres across and weighing 43 grams, with a solid paddle. Paddles were once made of wood; today carbon fibre and fibreglass are more common. Unlike squash, the court is open on three sides.
The game is run by the Federación Deportiva Peruana de Paleta Frontón. It holds two national tournaments a year for more than 1,000 players, along with a Champion of Champions event and regional tournaments in the provinces. Lima alone has at least 1,200 courts, in clubs, homes, schools and public sports slabs, and Spanish-language sources put the number of players nationwide at more than 45,000. The sport got its first international showcase at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, where it was played under the Basque pelota programme.
Football got a new home in the same period. A rebuilt Estadio Nacional opened in central Lima on 27 October 1952, in time for the 1953 South American Championship. On 24 May 1964 it was the scene of one of the deadliest disasters in football. During a match between Peru and Argentina, fans invaded the pitch after a refereeing decision. Police fired tear gas, and in the crush against the steel shutters of the exit stairwells, 328 people died by the official count, and some estimates are higher. The stadium was renovated for the 2004 Copa América and again in 2010–11, and it now holds 40,272 seated spectators.
1970 to 1988: Cubillas's World Cups and the Hijas del Sol
Peru's second golden era began with qualification for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Teófilo Cubillas, born in 1949 and nicknamed "El Nene", formed a forward partnership with Hugo Sotil. Peru reached the quarter-finals, lost to the eventual champions Brazil, and received the first FIFA Fair Play Trophy. Cubillas was named South American Footballer of the Year in 1972. Between 1970 and 1978 he scored 10 goals in 13 World Cup matches, which still places him joint tenth on the all-time World Cup scoring list.
Peru failed to reach the 1974 World Cup, then won the 1975 Copa América, the first edition to use that name. The tournament had no host and was played home and away through the year. Peru reached the final on a drawing of lots after a level semi-final, drew the final with Colombia on points, and won the play-off 1–0. The team went to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina and reached the second round, then played in Spain in 1982. Elimination there marked the end of the attacking style that had made Peru one of the most admired teams of the period.
As the football team faded, volleyball took over. The game had reached Peru in 1911. The government of President Augusto B. Leguía hired two American educators, Joseph Lockey and Joseph McKnight, to reform the schools, and they brought the game with them. A national league, the Liga Nacional Superior de Voleibol, followed in 1965. The women's team finished fourth at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. It then rose to the top of the world game under the Korean coach Park Man-bok.
In September 1982 Peru hosted the Women's World Championship. Matches were played in six cities, Lima, Trujillo, Tacna, Ica, Arequipa and Chiclayo, with the finals at the Coliseo Amauta in Lima, and the hosts took silver. Bronze followed at the 1986 World Championship in Czechoslovakia. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, the team captained by Cecilia Tait won silver. Tait, born in 1962 and nicknamed "La Zurda de Oro" (the Golden Lefty), entered the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in 2005 and later sat in Congress.
1987 to Today: The Alianza Air Disaster, the 2018 Return and Liga 1
In the late 1980s football had a generation to hope for: a young Alianza Lima side called Los Potrillos, "the Colts". On 8 December 1987 the Peruvian Navy Fokker F27 bringing the team back from a match in Pucallpa crashed into the Pacific near Callao. Of the 43 people on board, only the pilot survived. The national team, built around those players, went into a long decline. In late 2008 FIFA briefly suspended Peru while the government investigated the federation.
The recovery began in March 2015, when the Argentine coach Ricardo Gareca took charge. Under him Peru returned to the World Cup in Russia in 2018, its first finals since 1982, finished third at the 2015 Copa América and reached the 2019 final. Peru then lost a 2022 World Cup play-off to Australia and failed to qualify for 2026.
Club football keeps the game going at home. Liga 1, called the Torneo Descentralizado from 1966 to 2019, has 18 teams in 2026 and splits each season into Apertura and Clausura tournaments. Universitario leads with 29 titles and plays at the Estadio Monumental "U" in Lima's Ate district. It opened in 2000 and holds 80,093, making it Peru's largest stadium. Outside Lima, Cienciano of Cusco won the 2003 Copa Sudamericana and the 2004 Recopa Sudamericana. Sport has spread along the coast too: Felipe Pomar won the men's world surfing championship in Peru in 1965, and Sofía Mulánovich became the first Latin American world champion of women's surfing in 2004.
Almost all of this history unfolded in Lima and Callao, and how they rank against Peru's other urban centres is set out in the largest cities in Peru. The 1975 final opponent is covered in our Colombia vs Peru comparison, and you can read about Cubillas and Tait alongside other figures in famous people from Peru.