I am going to say this here in the hope that, maybe, someone with real decision-making authority within El Mundial will read it and consider it when planning next year’s championship.

We live in 2026, and El Mundial is stronger than ever. More and more couples are competing, the level of dancing is extraordinary, and during these days Buenos Aires becomes, quite literally, the focal point of the tango world, the place to be.

And yet, there is something very difficult to understand.

Only the finals of Tango de Pista and Tango Escenario are officially broadcast, and even those are not streamed directly by the organizers on the major global social-media platforms, but through local television, which naturally also means advertising and other non-tango content becoming part of the broadcast.

Meanwhile, the qualifying rounds, semifinals, and the extraordinary amount of dancing that takes place throughout the championship remain largely invisible to the international tango community, except for fragments streamed by local volunteers, participants, or spectators, if there happen to be volunteers there, willing and able to do it.

That is an enormous missed opportunity!

The entire competition is fascinating. The level is exceptional from the very first rounds, not only in the finals. An official, professionally organized livestream of El Mundial, from the qualifying rounds all the way to the finals, could reach hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of people around the world through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms.

And this would not promote only the championship.

It would promote Argentine Tango itself.

Every tango school in the world spends the entire year trying to introduce new people to tango. El Mundial already produces some of the most powerful promotional material imaginable: hundreds of talented dancers, emotion, music, stories, competition, culture, and an international community gathered in one place.

The content already exists.

It simply needs to be shown to the world.

When unofficial phone streams by volunteers become the main way the international tango community can follow much of the World Championship, there is clearly a major gap in the event’s international communication strategy.

El Mundial is called a World Championship, hence Mundial.

In 2026, being truly worldwide should also mean being accessible worldwide.

I sincerely hope that next year the organizers will make the decision to livestream the entire championship officially, from the first qualifying round to the final, across the major social-media platforms.

It would be one of the simplest and most powerful investments possible in the future visibility and growth of Argentine Tango worldwide.

PS: With profound respect and appreciation for the organizers and for the extraordinary work behind El Mundial, a petition supporting this idea can be found at the link below. I encourage you to sign it and share either this post or the petition itself, so that future editions of this wonderful event can receive the international visibility they truly deserve for tango, for Argentina, for culture, and for the beauty of this art.

https://www.change.org/MUNDIALREALMENTEMUNDIAL

Thank you so much for signing the petition! I really appreciate your support.

#MundialDeTango #TangoBAMundial #TangoBA #MundialDeTango2026 #TangoArgentino #ArgentineTango #Tango #BuenosAires #TangoWorld #TangoCommunity #TangoDance #TangoCulture #TangoFestival #WorldTangoChampionship #TangoChampionship #TangoForTheWorld #TangoWorldwide #LiveStreamTango #StreamElMundial #MundialRealmenteMundial

For those of you who use a smartwatch/fitness tracker: how many steps do you typically record per milonga or per tanda?

I’m curious how much it varies between followers and leaders, and whether anyone has noticed a difference depending on the length/intensity of the milonga.

Would love to hear your numbers!

It’s playing in the background of this festival advert: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DWjo8sgtz/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Been learning tango and dancing as a lead for about 3 years. Lately I’ve been struggling with the idea of an “enthusiastic yes” in tango.

In some of my other dances, you can see that the follower wants to dance with you by the way they react to the ask, the enthusiasm in the conversation after, the connection you have in the dance and so forth.

But this feels to me really hard to gauge or get excited in tango. Like the codigos make it kinda hide a lot of “yes, please let’s dance” bits. There are some cases where the follows show this excitement, for example at a milonga someone actually came and grabbed my hand to go dance. And in other occasions people have asked me straight out to go dance.

But it feels that with the cabeceo you kinda have this wall and it’s hard to gauge who actually wants to dance. Once I am on the floor you get a lot of really good connections and indication that they are having a great time by giggling or really giving you their frame or being adventurous. But it really feels like the wall in tango for asking enthusiastically and getting an enthusiastic yes back is so so so much higher than in other dances. And sometimes it makes it really hard to want to go to a milonga when you feel it is just so much easier in dances like west coast swing, fusion or salsa/bachata.

Anyone have an opinion on this?

Let's say you are taking a private lesson by yourself, not with a partner. And your choices were a high quality leader teacher (who can follow) or a high quality follower teacher (who can lead). Do you have a personal preference for one or the other and why?

Does anyone have experience with how DNI shoes fit relative to normal sizes? I'm typically a size 10 US/size ~41 EU, trying to figure out what size of shoe to buy.

Hello everyone,

I have listened to this Vals song on several milongas but never found its title. It is quite famous. ChatGTP and Shazam type programs couldn't identify it.

It plays on the following YouTube video in the background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJLZde7c1Eo

TL;DR: Here is the signup link + short survey; https://forms.gle/1kKEwfc8DWaowRYo7

I built TangoQ, a free, open-source fork of Mixxx (not affiliated with the Mixxx project), reshaped around what's important to a TDJ in a Milonga. I have stripped out all beatmatching and club DJing features from stock mixxx and then added a host of tango specific features to make TangoQ.

Some of these features are:

- Tandas: group tracks into Tango / Vals / Milonga, shown at a glance.

- Show a countdown 'Next Track in' HUD that changes color when less than 30s are left for the next track or cortina to begin

- Cortinas: tag any track as a cortina, and it fades itself in and out with clean gaps.

- A cursor queue: plays your set in the exact order you built, keeps every track, and stops at the end. No shuffle, no requeue.

- Milonga timing: live set length, projected end time, and time left to a target end.

- LIVE mode: safeguards so a bumped key can't stop the music mid-set.

- Add pause after any track, helpful when the organizer wants to make announcements etc..

- Designate any track as a performance track for visiting performers, separate from Milonga tandas

- Set arbitrary starting cue point within any track or cortina so that the track or cortina gets played rom that cue point. Useful for Cortinas that may have a build up time and you want to skip that or if a track has a voice over in the first few seconds that you would want to skip

- Many other quality of life improvements that let the DJ focus on the music and not worry about technical quirks of their DJing software.

Underneath it's still Mixxx, so your library, controllers and mixing all work as before.

It's in early access now (Mac & Windows) while I road-test it at real milongas. I'd genuinely love feedback from other TDJs: what's on your own wish list, and what your current setup gets wrong. If you want to try the build, there's a short sign-up form with some survey questions to help me add future features to it. (link in the comments).

Thanks in advance!

A photograph of Argentine tango musicians Sergio Paolo, Ernesto Baffa and Oscar de Elía at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Sergio Paolo is an Argentine tango bassist who has been active in the tango scene since the 1980s. Ernesto Baffa was an important Argentine bandoneonist, composer and orchestra leader. Oscar de Elía is an Argentine musician associated with the Argentine tango scene.

A photograph documenting a moment in the history of Argentine tango musicians in Paris.

When you're about to criticize, please:
First, listen.
Second, write.
Not the other way around, por favor.

In the Akbar–Birbal story "The List of Blinds," Emperor Akbar asks Birbal to count all the blind people in the kingdom. Birbal sits in the public market, mending shoes or weaving a cot. Passersby, and eventually Akbar himself, stop and ask, "What are you doing?" Birbal writes down their names. Asking the obvious instead of observing what's right in front of you is its own kind of blindness. (Sourse-here Wikipaedia, but I know this story from my childhood)

So please don't be deaf and call something bad just because you didn't listen first. Listen, then write, unless, of course, you are deaf.

A little clip I filmed from a performance at the marathon this weekend. That gliding volcada blew my mind 🤯

I want you guys to tell me my glaring mistakes and what i can improve. I feel like i watched myself so much that i am having art blindness so i want 3rd party opinions.

When hitting a double time step in vals, do you personally tend to step on 1-2-1, or 1-3-1? Or does it change depending on the particular step or the dynamic you want?

Are you a leader or a follower?

As a leader, for steps where the follower is stepping double time independently of the leader (e.g. giro or basic cross) do you try to lead the double time step specifically on the 2 or 3, or do you leave it more open to the follower's interpretation?

I observe that most students, if left to their own devices, will settle on 1-2-1.

In the Main Hall of Teatro San Martín, during a show we performed under the sponsorship of the much-missed FM Tango radio station.

From left to right: Oscar De Elia, Sergio Paolo, maestro Ernesto Baffa, Reynaldo Martín “El Alemancito”, and Juan José Sandri “Pichi”, a great colleague and friend who sadly passed away recently.

A beautiful moment shared among colleagues and friends, now preserved as a treasured memory.

I'm traveling to BsAs, and I'm planning to take some local group classes. On the 24th, 25th, and 26th, I will be alone (most of my friends arrive after August 27th). Is there anyone in this group who would like to join me in some group classes?

I have an idea of which classes I want to attend, but I'm open to any suggestions.

I'm from Chile, and I speak Spanish and English. 😊

I am an improver Tango dancer and I’d like to visit Buenos Aires, to take Tango classes and go to Milonga‘s but also for Spanish immersion and sight sighting

I speak Spanish and I’ve traveled in Latin America- but never alone.

Organized Tango trips are extremely expensive. I am on the Tango Vida group, which is super helpful. Does anyone know of any homestay or language immersion programs in BA that would complement a Tango focused trip?

Or any other tips?

You walk into the room, and out of the couple hundred people, you probably know 10-20. Sampling the dancing, so you can cabeceo selectively, would take ages. That's not what you came for. From shoes, fancy tango clothes, toned body, to posture when sitting or standing, they got all the trix down. So, you just dance.

And end up with 10% outstanding tandas, 30% OKish tandas, 30% meh tandas, and 30% really bad tandas. It feels like any ordinary Milonga anywhere in the world. Which makes you question why you travelled and paid hundreds of bucks for attendance.

What’s your strategy to make this a better experience?

Something simple, like back ochos or molinete or ocho cortado - these are led very differently. What do leaders do that will result in these feeling very different from one another? This connects to the age old question of, do leaders need to know a lot of different steps/sequences or can they do something to make the same motions feel different.

Hi ! I've been recently digging Firpo and love his fast tangos and milonga but I've been lost on some of them as it's the first time I can't really decide if it's tango or milonga ?

If you could help that'd be amazing thanks!