Bostonians with ties to Cape Verde wore the country’s flag on bags, shawls, and most popularly, soccer jerseys during a City Hall flag raising Sunday to celebrate the archipelago nation’s 51st Independence Day.
However, the celebration also seemed to mark Cape Verde’s historic run in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, where it became the team from the smallest nation to make it to the knockout round of the tournament.
Cabo Verde, as it is known to locals, is a collection of islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa with a population slightly over half a million people. It became independent of Portuguese rule in 1975.
Massachusetts hosts the largest Cape Verdean community in the U.S., with more than 70,000 people living in the state of Cape Verdean descent.
With such strong local ties, Mayor Michelle Wu said at the flag raising ceremony that during Cape Verde’s last game against Argentina Friday, which ended in a hard-fought loss, she’d walked around the city seeing everyone tuned into the match.
“It was hard to put it into words,” Solange Smith said, wearing her team jersey to the ceremony. “To be on the world stage, for people to see… pride is an understatement.”
Indira Frederico said the game against Argentina and the run up were amazing.
“Now, we are going to be known as a county,” she said. “We made history.”
Standing with everyone else dressed in blue, she said, “We’re so proud of our country, of our team.”
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