Shakira, Madonna, BTS, Justin Bieber & More Take Over FIFA’s First-Ever World Cup Final Halftime Show

The 2026 FIFA World Cup Final halftime show did exactly what FIFA hoped and exactly what soccer purists feared: It turned the most sacred match in the sport into an 11-and-a-half-minute pop fever dream.

Staged Sunday (July 19) at New York New Jersey Stadium (the rebranded MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey) during the Spain-Argentina final, the first-ever halftime spectacle in the championship match moved with the logic of a playlist on shuffle and the pace of a caffeine rush, squeezing Madonna, BTS, Justin Bieber, Shakira, Burna Boy, Gustavo Dudamel, a children’s chorus, the Muppets, Coldplay’s Chris Martiin, and a sky full of colorful fireworks into a blink-and-you-missed-it production that still somehow felt gigantic. If the challenge was making every second count, the show’s greatest success was understanding that subtlety had no place here.

Madonna kicked things off in gloriously extra fashion, rolling in with DJ Stuart Price behind her while Brazilian legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho appeared in a jeep with a license plate that read “Maestro,” because of course they did. From there, the show lurched — thrillingly, and at times hilariously — into Gustavo Dudamel leading players from the New York Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela through a dramatic take on The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” complete with flags, strings, color and Muppets in the mix.

BTS followed in matching red, motorcycle-inspired looks for a turbocharged “Dynamite,” before Jason Sudeikis, slipping back into Ted Lasso mode, introduced a notably subdued Justin Bieber for an acoustic “Everything Hallelujah.”

Then came the halftime show’s most natural stadium-pop peak: Shakira and Burna Boy tearing into the Billboard Global 200 chart-topper “Dai Dai,” backed by Ghetto Kids dancing. By the time the PS22 Chorus, Chris Martin, Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the cast closed on a giant “LOVE” tableau with fireworks overhead, the whole thing felt slightly unhinged, deeply overstuffed and undeniably memorable.

Here are the biggest highlights from each performance.