Every World Cup has a soundtrack. From Un'Estate Italiana drifting over Italia 90 to The Cup of Life, Waka Waka and the terrace singalong of Wavin' Flag, the official songs and anthems become part of how we remember each summer. Here is the story of the greatest, and the Shakira, Burna Boy and Bocelli tracks scoring the 2026 tournament as it heads for the MetLife final.
A great World Cup song does something a match report cannot. It bottles the mood of a whole tournament into three or four minutes you can hum for the rest of your life.
Football's biggest event has been paired with music for decades, but the modern era of the globally released official song took hold at Italia 90. Since then a World Cup summer has come with its own anthem as reliably as it comes with a new ball and a new mascot. Ricky Martin's The Cup of Life in 1998 helped push Latin pop into the mainstream. Shakira's Waka Waka in 2010 became the most-watched World Cup song ever and the sound of the first finals held in Africa.
The songs also chart how FIFA thinks about the tournament. A single anthem has given way to full soundtracks and multi-artist albums that try to represent every host region and every audience. For 2026, spread across Canada, Mexico and the United States, that means a pop and Afrobeats official song, a grand ceremonial anthem and an 18-track album, a scale that matches the first 48-team World Cup. What follows is our ranking of the songs that have lasted, and a look at the music carrying this tournament to its close.
Our pick of the official songs and unofficial singalongs that outlived the tournaments they came from, counted down from the very top.
The benchmark. Shakira, with South African band Freshlyground, built the official 2010 song on the Cameroonian anthem Zamina mina (Zangalewa), and the result became the most-watched World Cup song of all time, with billions of YouTube views. It was the sound of the first World Cup on African soil and is still played in stadiums and fan zones the world over, including this summer.
Ricky Martin performed La Copa de la Vida at the 1998 final in Paris, and its worldwide success is often described as the moment Latin pop broke through globally. The chant of the chorus, the horns and Martin's Grammy-night performance months later made it one of the most influential songs the tournament has produced.
Known in English as To Be Number One, the Italia 90 anthem by Gianna Nannini and Edoardo Bennato, with an English production from Giorgio Moroder, was the best-selling single in Italy across much of 1990. Wistful and grand, it is still named by many fans as the finest World Cup song ever written, the track that set the template for everything after.
Proof a World Cup soundtrack is bigger than the official song. K'naan's Wavin' Flag was the Coca-Cola celebration anthem of 2010, not FIFA's official track, yet its Somali-Canadian singalong chorus became so tied to South Africa that many remember it as the anthem of the summer.
The official song of Brazil 2014, a stadium-sized team-up from Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte, performed at the opening ceremony in Sao Paulo. Built for the fan zones more than the critics, its Ole Ola hook did exactly the job an official World Cup song is meant to do.
The 2018 official song from Nicky Jam, Will Smith and Era Istrefi closed the tournament with a performance before the final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. A polished, radio-ready single that kept the modern habit of debuting the anthem live on football's biggest stage.
Qatar 2022 used a whole soundtrack rather than one anthem, and its biggest hit was Dreamers by BTS star Jungkook with Fahad Al Kubaisi, performed at the opening ceremony and a global streaming success. It sat alongside Hayya Hayya, Light the Sky and Tukoh Taka in the first multi-song World Cup era.
The official song of the last World Cup staged in the United States before 2026, Gloryland paired Daryl Hall with the gospel group Sounds of Blackness for a soaring, all-American anthem. Thirty-two years on, its home tournament sets the stage that USA 1994 first built, with the final back on US soil.
The first 48-team World Cup has the biggest soundtrack yet: an official song, a ceremonial anthem and a full album, released across the spring and summer of 2026.
FIFA's approach for 2026 follows the multi-song model that Qatar 2022 popularised. Dai Dai is the chart single and fan-zone anthem, reuniting Shakira with the World Cup 16 years after Waka Waka and pairing her with Nigerian superstar Burna Boy. The ceremonial DNA (More Than a Game) leans on Andrea Bocelli's classical voice and David Guetta's production for the big-occasion moments, and the 18-track album gathers music from across the tournament. Expect the biggest of them at the closing ceremony before the final at MetLife Stadium on 19 July.
A list this tight leaves out songs that soundtracked whole childhoods.
Anastacia's Boom carried the 2002 finals in Korea and Japan, while a young generation grew up on the Vangelis-composed 2002 anthem behind the coverage. New Order's World in Motion, recorded with the England squad for 1990, remains one of the best songs any national team has released, complete with John Barnes rapping a verse. Further back, the 1994 tournament also gave us Gloryland's companion pieces, and Daryl Hall's vocal still opens the memory of USA 94 for many American fans.
What the very best share is that they stopped being background music. They became shorthand for a summer, a hook that brings the whole tournament flooding back the moment it plays. That is why, long after the results fade, the songs are still the first thing many of us reach for when we think of a World Cup.
The colour, culture and closing stages of the tournament, on and off the pitch:
The supporters turning the host cities into a carnival, ranked.
Meet the fans ›The celebrations that became World Cup folklore.
See the list ›The best and boldest shirts of the tournament.
See the kits ›Everything on the 19 July showpiece near New York.
Read the preview ›This guide draws on FIFA's official music announcements and the major histories of the World Cup song:
WorldCuply.com is the premium .com for 2026 World Cup content, coverage and commerce. The listing is live now, with the final at MetLife Stadium on 19 July 2026.