The seventeenth volume of European Studies in Sport History is devoted to one of the most debated and interdisciplinary themes in sports historiography: the relationship between sport and politics. Based on contributions first presented at the 2021 CESH Congress in Lisbon – held jointly with the ISHPES Congress – this issue brings together a selection of studies that reflect the diversity of approaches, chronologies, and contexts through which this intersection has been explored and reinterpreted in recent years. Building on the framework developed by Allen Guttmann, who identified six key areas – from totalitarian regimes to Olympic policies, from racial and gender politics to class dynamics – the articles in this volume extend the conversation by asking new questions and adopting innovative methodologies. Political dimensions of sport are examined in colonial contexts, such as football in Mozambique under Portuguese rule, and in symbolic rivalries between sporting heroes, such as that between Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali in postwar Italy, laden with ideological and religious meaning. The issue also explores how sports clubs became spaces for political resistance and social integration, as seen in the case of C.F. Estrela da Amadora in Portugal, and how sport was managed under authoritarian systems such as Francoist Spain and Pilsudski's Poland. Local studies, such as the case of Rijeka/Fiume, and broader investigations like the dissemination of Italian fencing in Argentina, reveal how power, identity, and belonging intersected in the sporting world of the twentieth century. Collectively, the articles offer a critical perspective on sport's role in shaping national imaginaries, producing social hierarchies, and negotiating collective identities. The volume confirms the value of sports history as a privileged lens through which to understand the political and social dynamics of modernity.