Shakira is back in familiar territory. Sixteen years after Waka Waka became inseparable from the 2010 World Cup, the Colombian star has unveiled a new tournament track, “Dai Dai,” this time with Nigerian artist Burna Boy. A teaser released this week shows Shakira performing at Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã Stadium, surrounded by dancers and football imagery, with the full song scheduled to arrive on May 14, 2026.
That, on its own, would already be a big pop-culture story. But there’s another layer here, and it matters. While multiple reports are describing “Dai Dai” as an official World Cup anthem, FIFA itself has been publicly promoting a broader official World Cup 2026 album, whose rollout began earlier with “Lighter” by Jelly Roll and Carín León as its first single. In other words, Shakira may well have the song that captures public imagination, but FIFA’s own music strategy now looks more like a multi-track campaign than the old one-song, one-tournament formula fans remember.
That ambiguity is part of why the announcement landed the way it did. For a lot of football fans, World Cup music is emotional memory as much as branding. Waka Waka still carries enormous weight, and Shakira’s history with the tournament gives her a kind of unofficial ownership of the moment, whether FIFA formally frames it that way or not. Reports around the teaser have leaned hard on that nostalgia, presenting “Dai Dai” as a return to the global football stage and a deliberate callback to her earlier World Cup legacy.
The Burna Boy collaboration also feels calculated in a smart way. Shakira brings the familiar World Cup pedigree; Burna Boy brings a huge international audience and a sound that fits the tournament’s increasingly global, cross-genre identity. From the preview alone, the song appears to blend upbeat stadium-pop energy with Afrobeats influence, aiming for the kind of chorus-heavy, crowd-ready style these events usually chase.
And this World Cup is not a small backdrop. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the first men’s tournament with 48 teams, hosted jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico. FIFA has clearly been trying to build a larger musical ecosystem around that scale, not just a single signature anthem. Its official album page says “Lighter” opened the campaign, and additional songs are being positioned as part of that same tournament soundtrack.
So yes, the headline is true in spirit: Shakira has unveiled a 2026 World Cup song, and it’s already being treated by many outlets and fans as a major anthem for the event. Still, the cleaner way to say it is this: Shakira has launched a high-profile World Cup 2026 track, “Dai Dai,” but FIFA’s official music rollout suggests the tournament won’t be defined by just one song.
