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The FIFA World Cup Final is getting its Super Bowl moment. Shakira, Madonna, and BTS have been announced as the co-headliners of the first-ever halftime show at a World Cup Final, set for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey and the entertainment world is still catching its breath.
The announcement dropped at 9 p.m. PT Wednesday in a social media video that was, somehow, exactly as chaotic and delightful as you’d hope: Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who is curating the show, broke the news alongside Sesame Street’s Elmo and Cookie Monster, plus Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the rest of the Muppet crew. At one point, Martin and Elmo FaceTime BTS directly in the clip. It is a lot. It works completely.
The show is being produced by Global Citizen the nonprofit behind massive benefit concerts tackling global poverty and hunger and will raise money for the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, described as “a landmark initiative working to raise $100 million to expand access to quality education and football for children worldwide.” FIFA has also committed that $1 from every ticket sold to a World Cup 2026 match will be donated to the fund.
According to Billboard, the performance will run approximately 11 minutes — a tight window for three of the biggest acts on the planet, but then again, these are people who know how to make a moment count.\n\n
Three Acts, Three Reasons This Is a Very Big Deal
Shakira is the natural anchor here. The best-selling female Latin artist of all time has a genuine World Cup legacy: she performed at the opening ceremony of the 2010 tournament in South Africa and delivered “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” one of the most iconic sports anthems ever recorded. On the same day this halftime show was announced, she dropped “Dai Dai,” her official 2026 World Cup song with Afrobeats star Burna Boy – making her the only artist to have two official FIFA World Cup songs to her name. The timing couldn’t be more deliberate. Her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour also has New Jersey and New York dates on July 14 and July 20, essentially bracketing the final itself.
Madonna brings her own history to the stage. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer headlined the Super Bowl halftime show back in 2012, so she knows exactly what performing for half the planet feels like. She’s also in a full creative moment right now — her new album Confessions II, the long-awaited sequel to her 2005 dance-floor classic, arrives July 3, just two weeks before the final. She’s already released lead single “Bring Your Love,” a duet with Sabrina Carpenter that the two live-debuted during Carpenter’s headlining Weekend Two set at Coachella, as well as a second track, “I Feel So Free.”
And then there’s BTS. The K-pop supergroup completed their full return to music in March with the release of ARIRANG, their sixth studio album and first project since all seven members completed their mandatory military service in South Korea. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and held the top spot for three consecutive weeks their first multi-week chart-topper. Their ARIRANG World Tour launched in Goyang, South Korea before moving to North America in April, with three sold-out nights at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. International dates run through next March. The World Cup Final will be their biggest stage yet.
This Almost Happened in 1994 and Then Didn’t
The fact that it took until 2026 to get a World Cup halftime show is its own fascinating footnote. When the U.S. last hosted the tournament in 1994 an event that drew over 3.5 million fans and directly led to the creation of Major League Soccer organizers actually tried to make it happen.
“We had Whitney Houston to do the halftime show,” Alan Rothenberg, then-president of US Soccer, told USA Today. “We wanted to do it Super Bowl-style. FIFA would not allow us to do it.” Houston ended up performing during the closing ceremony instead, though even that was complicated FIFA executives worried about players’ warm-up time and moved the ceremony’s start time up an extra half hour.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino formally announced the halftime show concept in March of last year. “This will be a historic moment for the FIFA World Cup and a show befitting the biggest sporting event in the world,” he said on Instagram. He also revealed plans for FIFA to “take over” New York’s Times Square on the tournament’s final weekend.
Chris Martin and Global Citizen did a trial run of the format last year with the Club World Cup Final halftime show at MetLife Stadium, featuring Doja Cat, Tems, and J Balvin with Coldplay surprising the crowd with a rendition of “A Sky Full of Stars.” That show used a stage woven directly into the stands, a staging concept that could well return for July’s main event.
The scale of what’s at stake here is genuinely staggering. The 2022 World Cup Final drew over 500 million live viewers more than four times the audience of the most-watched Super Bowl in history, the 2025 Eagles-Chiefs matchup, which averaged 127.71 million viewers. Madonna and Shakira have both headlined that game. Nothing they’ve done before will be quite like this.
The Full World Cup Entertainment Picture
The halftime show is the crown jewel, but FIFA has built out an entire entertainment program around the 2026 tournament, which kicks off June 11 across 16 cities in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada the first time the U.S. has hosted since that 1994 tournament.
The U.S. opening ceremony takes place June 12 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, ahead of the USMNT’s first group stage match against Paraguay. That show will feature Katy Perry, Future, Anitta, LISA, Rema, and Tyla. In Mexico, the June 11 opener between Mexico and South Africa at Azteca Stadium will be celebrated with performances from J Balvin, Tyla, Lila Downs, Los Ángeles Azules, Maná, Alejandro Fernández, Belinda, and Danny Ocean. And Canada’s opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina at Toronto’s BMO Field will feature Alanis Morissette, Michael Bublé, Alessia Cara, Jessie Reyez, Elyanna, Nora Fatehi, Sanjoy, Vegedream, and William Prince.
FIFA is also releasing an official tournament album, which includes “Lighter” by Jelly Roll, Carín León, and Cirkut. Games air in the U.S. on Fox in English and Telemundo in Spanish.
For BTS, Madonna, and Shakira, though, July 19 is the date that matters. Thirty-two years after Whitney Houston was told no, the World Cup Final is finally getting its halftime show and it’s getting three of the biggest names in music history to open it.”, “category”: “Music
