On a gray July morning in Liverpool, the side of a red-brick pub has transformed into a public shrine. Diogo Jota’s face now smiles down from the Halfway House pub on Walton Road, hands forming his signature heart gesture. A few minutes’ walk from Anfield, this mural of the late striker has drawn locals and pilgrims alike, some leaving Liverpool scarves or quietly tracing the giant “YNWA” letters on the wall. It’s a scene of bittersweet communion: a city grieving and celebrating, all in one, before a painted image of the man who wore the No. 20 shirt.
The tribute was completed in mid-July by John Culshaw, a renowned local street artist and lifelong Liverpool fan. Culshaw spent five days on a cherry-picker, covering the pub’s exterior in the likeness of Jota blowing a kiss. “By immortalising him in our city, it shows that we are sending the love right back,” Culshaw said. The mural captures Jota’s warmth. He is depicted beaming and forming a heart with his hands, an image chosen to reflect the bond he shared with supporters.
This was not the mural Culshaw originally planned to paint. He had been in talks to do a piece honoring legendary Liverpool managers, but fate intervened. Early on July 3, Jota, just 28 years old, and his younger brother André were killed in a car accident in Spain’s Zamora province. The tragedy sent shockwaves through Merseyside. Within days, the pub’s owners asked Culshaw if he could create something to honor the fallen player. “As Liverpool fans we know how to deal with tragedy and show our appreciation to someone who has given us so much,” Culshaw recalled. By the following week, he had turned a blank wall into a towering portrait of Jota, haloed by the simple words “Forever 20.”
The mural’s title phrase says it all. Jota wore the No. 20 jersey, and “Forever 20” has become a refrain of tribute. It even echoes the message shared by Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk upon the news of Jota’s death: “A champion forever, number 20 forever.” Those words now preside over Sybil Road, where fans have been invited to write messages of love directly onto the mural in marker pen. Over the black backdrop, scrawled notes in red, blue, and green read “Our number 20. YNWA” and “RIP Jota – thanks for the memories.” Even Jota’s family members have added their own hand-written tributes alongside the supporters’, turning a piece of street art into an ever-growing memorial wall.
For John Culshaw, painting Jota’s mural was deeply personal. The 32-year-old artist grew up in Liverpool and has supported the club all his life. In fact, Culshaw’s own story is one of resilience that Scousers admire. As a child, he lost the use of his right arm in a near-fatal accident. “I was hit by a car and nearly died. But the doctors managed to put most of me back together again,” he once explained. Undeterred, he taught himself to draw and paint with his left hand. In recent years, Culshaw has made a name by splashing Liverpool’s football icons across city walls. He spent days in the lashing rain to spray-paint a giant portrait of Jürgen Klopp on a bar near Anfield. In 2022 he completed a two-story mural of Mohamed Salah across from the King Harry pub on Anfield Road. He even gave Steven Gerrard his first solo mural after a fan vote picked Gerrard’s image to be painted on The Sandon, the very pub where LFC was founded.
In short, Culshaw has become an unofficial artist-in-residence for Liverpool’s footballing pantheon. Still, he insists the Jota project was unique. “We tried to make it a bit less about football and more about Jota and what he means to us,” he said. It was an honor to create something that might help people heal, a way for fans to remember and pay respects to someone they loved, on and off the pitch. For a city that has mourned its share of heroes, painting Jota was as much an act of catharsis as artistry.
Liverpool has long used public art to channel collective emotion. In the wake of tragedy or triumph, the city’s walls often speak louder than its official monuments. Nowhere is that more evident than the neighborhoods around Anfield, which have become an open-air gallery of Liverpool FC history. Stroll the streets by the stadium and you’ll find towering portraits of present-day heroes, from a Liverpool-red Virgil van Dijk looming over a row of terraces to Trent Alexander-Arnold painted on the gable end of a house. There’s captain Jordan Henderson, arms aloft with the Premier League trophy, immortalized on a Sybil Road corner. There’s Salah in a burst of action, depicted twice in one mural to commemorate two of his most iconic goals. Further down Anfield Road, murals of club legends like Steven Gerrard, Ian Rush, and Roger Hunt dot the landscape.
Yet murals in Liverpool are not only about celebrating glories. They’re equally about commemorating loss and preserving memory. This is a city that knows tragedy intimately. After the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, creative tributes sprang up everywhere: solemn monuments, songs, graffiti. Just a few years ago, artist Paul Curtis painted a large mural honoring Anne Williams, a Liverpool mother who lost her 15-year-old son at Hillsborough and spent her life fighting for justice. It depicts Anne with a fist raised in triumph, marking the moment the truth of the disaster was finally acknowledged. In Liverpool, the past is written on the walls, sometimes in celebration, other times in sorrow, but always as a collective act of remembrance.
The new Diogo Jota mural joins this tradition. Unlike the jubilant murals of trophy lifts and historic victories, Jota’s portrait has a softer, more elegiac tone. There’s no championship on display, no record to commemorate. Just a broad smile and an outpouring of love in paint. It stands apart from the adrenaline of the Gerrard mural or the intensity of Henderson’s title-lift image. Instead, it radiates warmth and vulnerability. “We tried to make it less about football and more about Jota,” Culshaw said. The composition, with the heart-shaped hand gesture, speaks to affection rather than ambition. In place of a famous victory or quote, the mural’s only text is “Forever 20” – a simple, poignant promise that Jota’s number will never be forgotten.
Liverpool FC quickly announced that no player at any level will wear the No. 20 shirt again. And even as the team resumes play, Jota’s presence is everywhere. Teammates arrived at pre-season training after attending his funeral in Portugal, and a minute’s applause is planned at the next friendly match. The mural, however, will remain long after the tributes in the stadium conclude. It has turned a busy street corner into a gathering place. “Jota seemed to have the sort of character that Scousers like to get behind,” Culshaw said. “He always had a smile on his face. Anybody who gets their own song, usually that’s a sign that they’re well-loved – which he was.”
A public shrine in real time
As soon as the paint dried, fans began flocking to see Jota’s mural.
The appetite for tribute was so strong that even before Culshaw finished his work, plans were in motion for another mural. Renowned artist Paul Curtis launched a crowdfunding campaign to create a second large-scale painting of Jota and André on a wall near Anfield. The fundraiser smashed its goal in minutes, ultimately raising over 11 times the amount. Curtis announced that the extra funds would be donated to charities Jota supported. In an update, he wrote that the mural “will be for the fans, from the fans and painted by a fan.” In Liverpool, even the acts of remembrance are a team game.
The new Diogo Jota mural has quickly become part of the city’s aesthetic. On match days, fans gather under Jota’s beaming visage, perhaps touching the wall for luck or snapping a photo. On quieter days, someone might pass by and remember a goal Jota scored or a joyous chant of “Si Señor” that echoed from the Kop. The mural ensures those memories have a permanent home. “I think it’s just a nice way to remember Diogo,” Culshaw said. “It captures what we thought about him.” In Liverpool, a city that sings You’ll Never Walk Alone at every opportunity, even death does not sever the bond between player and supporters. Diogo Jota may be gone, but on the corner of Walton Road his heart still beats, in bright reds and whites, forever our number 20.
