The trial will once again seek to establish whether Maradona’s medical team was responsible for his death in November 2020.
Published April 14, 2026
A new trial into the death of Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona begins on Tuesday, a year after the first trial collapsed due to a scandal involving the judge.
Maradona, considered one of the greatest world players of all time, died at the age of 60 in November 2020 at his private residence while recovering from brain surgery.
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He died two weeks after surgery from heart failure and acute pulmonary edema (a condition in which fluid builds up in the lungs).
The new trial will hear from around 120 witnesses and will once again determine whether Maradona’s medical team was responsible for his death.
The trial, which began on March 11, found seven members of Maradona’s medical team charged with negligent homicide. The defense denies charges of “simple murder with final intent” in treating Maradona. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 8 to 25 years.
The medical team, located in the northern Tigre suburb of Buenos Aires, has been indicted over the circumstances of his convalescence, with prosecutors accused of gross negligence.
But two and a half months after the trial began, the case was halted after hours of sometimes tearful testimony by witnesses, including Maradona’s children.
The trial was canceled in May 2025 after it was revealed that one of the judges overseeing the trial, Julieta Macintuck, had been involved in a documentary that violated judicial rules in the hallways and offices of the Buenos Aires courthouse. She was later impeached.
The defense has argued that Mr. Maradona, who battled addiction to cocaine and alcohol, died of natural causes.
The trial is scheduled to continue until July.
News of the 1986 World Cup champion’s death sent hundreds of thousands of Argentines into the streets in grief amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Hailed as one of the greatest and most iconic players to ever grace a soccer pitch, Maradona struggled with drug addiction for many years and was also plagued by ties to Napoli’s underworld during his time at Napoli.
His performance in the 1986 World Cup tournament has since become a legend in the sports world. He called his controversial first goal in the quarter-finals “the hand of God”. Because it led to Argentina’s victory over England. They were rivals with England, with whom the country had gone to war four years earlier over the Falkland Islands, known in Spanish as the Malvinas Islands.
But Maradona’s second goal of the match, which he scored from his own half past several English opponents to score the decisive second goal, was sublime.
In 2000, soccer’s governing body, the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), named Maradona one of the two “Players of the Century,” along with Brazil’s Pele.
