Individual Mexican physicists have been working on experiments at CERN since UA1 (in the 1980s). Various institutes have been participating in ALICE and other institutes have joined CMS, NA62, AMS and experiments at the ISOLDE Facility.

In 1998, an International Cooperation Agreement (ICA) between the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) of Mexico and CERN was signed in order to further develop the scientific and technical cooperation in high-energy physics. A Protocol to the ICA was established in 2013, facilitating the participation of Mexican institutions in CERN programmes. The Protocol was extended in 2018 for a further five years, with a celebration of the 20th anniversary of formal cooperation. Beyond a growing commitment to the LHC programme, and the upgrade of the detectors, additional focus is on capacity building through which students receive grants from CONACyT to be trained in CERN’s technical departments and to perform research towards a doctorate in accelerator technologies.

Contacts with Mexico have been strengthened by its participation in HELEN (2005-2009) and EPLANET (2011-2016) and by the second and ninth CERN-Latin American Schools of High-Energy Physics (CLASHEP), held in Mexico in 2003 and 2017, respectively.

In August 2015, servers from the CERN Computer Centre were donated to the Faculty of Sciences in Physics and Mathematics and the Mesoamerican Centre for Theoretical Physics at University of Chiapas.

Interest from additional universities in the country in participating in the CERN programme is high and is under investigation.