The event, which will take place between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, will feature provincial teams from Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas, an island team from La Gomera, and teams from CD Tenerife and UD Las Palmas. They will be joined by walking football teams from the San Albino Senior Citizens' Association (from the Tíncer neighborhood) and from Tenerife clubs such as CD Candela, UD Las Zocas, UD Realejos, CD Villamar, and CD Santa Úrsula.
The activity, with a strong recreational component, will kick off with a novel Canarian derby between CD Tenerife, led by a former player, and UD Las Palmas, led by another former player. Both groups will be made up of former members of both entities, some of whom have played for both clubs.
Following this classic match, games will be played between the rest of the participating teams, who will be able to put into practice the skills learned in this variant of eleven-a-side football, which has gained followers across Europe in the last two decades. A former professional referee and a group of volunteers from the CD Tenerife Foundation will assist in the development of the day, which also has the support of commercial firms FAST and Fuente Alta.
In the Canary Islands, the AlGolpito project has facilitated the introduction of this modality through the network of public day centers for seniors. Since November 2025, technicians from the CD Tenerife Foundation and the UD Las Palmas in the eastern province have conducted introductory and subsequent training sessions to popularize this practice, recognized for its physical and emotional benefits.
“"It is an excellent way to get cardiovascular exercise without punishing the joints, and it has an enormous socialization component."
According to the project coordinator, walking football helps combat loneliness and allows people who thought their time on the football field was over to once again experience the adrenaline of scoring a goal or assisting a teammate. He also highlighted the growing participation of women in the project, noting that it is a fully inclusive sport where physical differences are leveled out as contact is prohibited and it does not rely on explosive speed.
Conceived as a way for people in their sixties to engage in physical activity, walking football allows for the practice of the world's most popular sport with moderate aerobic effort and low risk of injury. Its adapted rules prohibit running and the ball from exceeding 1.5 meters in height, and the playing surface corresponds to the dimensions of an eight-a-side football pitch.
