The Pop Corporation

The 2026 World Cup, regardless of what you think, is not just in the United States of America – it is actually hosted in all of our hearts, promoting world peace, unity amongst all races, people and, of course, Mexico and Canada too.

World Cup official songs are funny things. They’re corporate by their nature. We’re not talking about a particular nation’s song, like Three Lions, or the then West Germany’s camp schlager banger ‘Mexico Mi Amor’ from Mexico ’86 – we’re talking about the FIFA issued ‘anthem’ for the whole tournament.

These things are global in sound, but in a way that has to be decided by a committee – you have to sand off all the edges, you need someone who can sing in English, but isn’t English – we don’t make the rules.

Step forward Shakira, who just loves doing a song for a major sporting tournament. She’s already given us ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)’ in 2010, ‘La La La’ in 2014, and now, ‘Dai Dai’ for 2026, upping the ante with a feature from Burna Boy.

Honestly, you can imagine she’d do a song for the Hunger Games tournament if you asked her nicely enough.

All bases are covered here – the beat is produced in such a way that it might be AfroBeats (Africa, tick!), DemBow (the Caribbean, tick!) or Reggaeton (Latin America, tick!), while the instrumentation is vaguely *gestures toward the ether, kinda at everywhere and everything*.

Of course, it’s mostly in English, the international language of awkward Erasmus exchange programmes. Perfect!

It isn’t all in English though – we’re too global a nation for that. We are treated to the rallying cry of “dai, dai, ikou, dale, allez, let’s go!” which is in turn, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, French, and English.

The lyrics are all very aspirational as you’d imagine, talking about this being our time, overcoming adversity and all that good stuff – but the verse we like best goes like this.

Pelé, Maradona, Maldini, Romário
Cristiano Ronaldo
El Pibe, Iniesta, Beckham y Kaká
Messi, Mbappé, Salah
Brasil, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia
US, England, Germany, France
South Africa, España, México, Japan
Korea, Netherlands.

Feels like Africa as a continent is getting stiffed a bit in this song, but are you surprised when the video features a bunch of (presumably) African children with a token “we are ready too!” before routinely ignoring them. Maybe Burna Boy is meant to be enough, even though he’s Nigerian, and surprisingly, Nigeria didn’t qualify for this World Cup. Mad.

Shakira does manage to do some dancing in what appears to be some CGI desert, so maybe that’s their inclusion, not that Africa has some lovely, developed cities or anything.

You can imagine Gianni Infantino – without doubt one of the most dodgy CEOs around – gently tapping his hand on his knee as he sees is vision of the earth played out before him, all smiling faces and clement weather, and the global beat drowning out the cries of the many ways he is trying ruin everyone’s favourite sport.

Remember when he held a press conference and said “today I feel gay – today I feel disabled”? Well, watching this video, he must have felt like someone had showed him a vision of what the world would be like if he ran it, filled with children ignoring their poverty through dance, and the people of Brazil’s favelas allowing Shakira to hang out there like Michael Jackson did.

Infantino must be wondering what everyone is complaining about all the time – look at the world through his eyes, where Burna Boy and Shakira don’t appear in any shots together, and where Lionel Messi manages to speak a bit of English.

So open minded is Infantino’s vision of the world, that no-one even mocks Shakira for wearing some jeans that have only one leg.

Utopian!

Anyway, this is all part of an album which features a load of artists, including Future, Brazilian superstar Anitta, Daddy Yankee, Major Lazer, Nelly Furtado, Davido, Stormzy, Shaggy, The Rolling Stones and, remarkably, 21 Savage! There’s more, but that’s a real global beat line-up right there.

That all said, Shakira can do what she likes after her best football related song ‘Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53’ where she took Barcelona’s Gerard Pique to task after he was caught with his pants down (or grassed up by a pot of jam) and she’s sang ‘you traded a Ferrari for a Twingo’, amongst other zingers.

As an aside, Skinner and Baddiel are once again re-releasing ‘Three Lions’, meaning that the original 1996 version with it’s line of ’30 years of hurt’ is the same length of time from the original release to this new version. Fancy that!

World Cup fever is coming whether you like it or not.