Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy and Colombian pop icon Shakira will headline the first-ever FIFA World Cup final halftime show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, USA, on Sunday.
Damini Ogulu, known professionally as Burna Boy, posted a video on his X handle on Friday showing the pair embracing and exchanging smiles during rehearsals for Sunday’s performance.
The video, accompanied by photos, showed both artists in casual attire, sharing laughter and a tight hug outside production trailers at MetLife Stadium.
Burna Boy captioned the clip, “Sunday Prep! @shakira See you at the @FIFAWorldCup Final!” He added the multilingual phrase “Dai dai, ikó, dale, allez, let’s go!” completing the post.
FIFA confirmed earlier that Burna Boy and Shakira will perform Dai Dai, the official song of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, during the halftime segment of Sunday’s final between Spain and Argentina at MetLife Stadium.
The performance forms part of what FIFA has billed as the tournament’s first-ever Super Bowl-style halftime show.
As gathered by Westtrybe, the halftime break could extend beyond the traditional 15 minutes to accommodate the full entertainment program, with broadcasters preparing for a total break of approximately 30 minutes.
That combined window would include the standard 15-minute pundit analysis segment and an 11-minute performance slot, which Burna Boy and Shakira are expected to headline.
The lineup confirmed by FIFA extends well beyond the two co-headliners. BTS, Madonna, Justin Bieber, conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and the PS22 Chorus performing alongside Coldplay are all billed for the show. Characters from Sesame Street and The Muppets will also appear during the program.
FIFA disclosed that the halftime show will support global education initiatives for children. No further detail on the specific structure of that initiative appeared in the source material reviewed by Westtrybe.
Sunday’s final pairs Spain against Argentina. It is the match that will follow the halftime entertainment at MetLife Stadium.
Both artists were not appearing together in New Jersey for the first time. Shakira and Burna Boy previously performed Dai Dai at the opening ceremony of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Mexico City, where the song received its official unveiling as the tournament’s anthem.
The Friday rehearsal footage marked the most direct public signal yet that preparations at the New Jersey venue were advancing on schedule, with the two co-headliners photographed together outside production trailers in casual dress, less than 48 hours before kick-off.
Burna Boy’s inclusion in the show places a Nigerian Afrobeats act at the center of the single most-watched annual sporting event on the planet. It is a positioning that would have been difficult to imagine for the genre even a decade ago, and it reflects how substantially Afrobeats has shifted from a regional sound to a fixture in global popular culture.
Dai Dai, the track he recorded with Shakira, does not simply sit alongside the tournament as background music. It serves as the official anthem, blending Afrobeats and Latin pop into a production designed to speak to the multicultural character of a World Cup held simultaneously across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, three countries whose combined population spans nearly every major cultural tradition on earth.
The song’s opening lyric line, repeated in the clip Burna Boy posted Friday, draws on multiple languages, reflecting what FIFA described as the broader production’s multicultural intent. That choice is not incidental. World Cup anthems carry a specific burden. They are expected to travel, to sound familiar to people who have never heard them before, and to hold up across the duration of a tournament that unfolds over weeks.
The multilingual construction of the opening line suggests a deliberate effort to distribute that familiarity as widely as possible, reaching listeners in Latin America, West Africa, Europe, and beyond without anchoring the song too firmly in any single tradition.
No further statements from FIFA officials beyond the earlier confirmation appeared in the source material available to Westtrybe at the time of publication. What is confirmed is the moment itself. The halftime show begins between the two 45-minute halves of the Spain-Argentina final at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, slotting Burna Boy into a window that television networks in nearly every country on earth will carry live.
For Nigerian music, and for Afrobeats as a broader movement, the significance of that window is difficult to overstate. The stage is as large as the sport gets.
