Seventeen tournaments, seventeen official songs, two of them by Shakira. The history of the World Cup anthem runs from Chile 1962's El Rock del Mundial, through Italia '90's Un'estate italiana and Ricky Martin's La Copa de la Vida, to Shakira's Waka Waka (4.5 billion YouTube views) and back to Shakira again in 2026 with Dai Dai feat. Burna Boy. The artists, the videos, why some go viral and others vanish, and where to find them all.
The official song of the 2026 FIFA World Cup is Dai Dai by Shakira featuring Burna Boy, released 14 May 2026. It is the 17th official anthem in the modern FIFA lineage and the second time Shakira has held the slot, after Waka Waka in 2010. No other artist has been the lead vocalist on two official World Cup songs.
The music video was filmed at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, the spiritual home of South American football, four weeks before kickoff on a tournament that, for the first time, is hosted by three nations and contested by 48 teams. The pairing is a deliberate cross-continental signal: a Latin-American superstar in her commercial peak, paired with the global face of Afrobeats, recording on a stage that has hosted two World Cup finals.
For the release-day deep dive on Dai Dai (the teaser timeline, the credits, the announcement video and the FIFA promotional rollout) see our dedicated Dai Dai release page →
If there is a single official FIFA World Cup song that everyone in the world has heard, it is Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) by Shakira featuring Freshlyground, the official song of South Africa 2010. With over 4.5 billion views on YouTube, it is one of the most-watched music videos in the platform's history and by a clear margin the most-watched World Cup song ever.
Watch: Shakira · Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) · The official 2010 FIFA World Cup song
The track is built on a sample of Zangalewa, a 1980s Cameroonian military marching song by the band Golden Sounds, licensed for the FIFA release. The original was already a stadium chant across central and west Africa long before the World Cup, sung by soldiers and football fans for decades. Shakira and South African band Freshlyground re-recorded the chant and built a new pop top-line around it. The video, filmed in South Africa with a cast of African dancers, gave the 2010 tournament a visual identity that has outlasted most of the football.
Three things made Waka Waka land where most World Cup songs do not. First, Shakira was at her commercial peak with the back-catalogue and tour to push it. Second, the chorus is language-light and reads as a chant in any stadium. Third, the song shipped seven weeks before kickoff, with the music video four weeks out, which gave it the streaming runway to enter the tournament already a hit.
FIFA's "official song" is not exactly the same thing tournament to tournament. The pre-1990 anthems were often local productions for the host nation that travelled patchily. From Italia '90 onward, FIFA increasingly designated a single global artist or producing team and routed the release through a major label. The list below is the canonical sequence as recognised by FIFA's tournament archives.
| Year & Host | Song | Artist(s) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 Chile | El Rock del Mundial | Los Ramblers | The first widely recognised tournament song, in Spanish, riding the global rock and roll wave. |
| 1966 England | World Cup Willie | Lonnie Donegan | First mascot song, the start of the modern tournament-merchandising lineage. |
| 1970 Mexico | Futbol Mexico 70 | Various Mexican artists | Mostly local circulation; the tournament's visual identity outran its musical one. |
| 1974 West Germany | Futball / Wir sind dabei | Maryla Rodowicz | Polish singer Maryla Rodowicz performed the official song, an early cross-border choice. |
| 1978 Argentina | El Mundial | Ennio Morricone | Instrumental theme by the Italian film composer; one of the most distinctive tournament anthems by reputation. |
| 1982 Spain | Mundial '82 / Yo te dare | Placido Domingo & Plastic Bertrand | Multiple official tracks; Spain leaned on home opera star Placido Domingo. |
| 1986 Mexico | A Special Kind of Hero | Stephanie Lawrence | English-language ballad released alongside several local Mexican songs. |
| 1990 Italy | Un'estate italiana Best-seller | Edoardo Bennato & Gianna Nannini | The benchmark. Sold in the multiple millions across Europe; the song most Italians of a certain age still sing without prompting. |
| 1994 USA | Gloryland | Daryl Hall & Sounds of Blackness | The first US-hosted World Cup; the song never quite found the cultural traction the tournament did. |
| 1998 France | La Copa de la Vida (The Cup of Life) | Ricky Martin | The global breakthrough. Ricky Martin's chant-driven anthem hit number one in over 30 countries and effectively launched the modern Latin-pop crossover wave. |
| 2002 South Korea & Japan | Boom / Anthem | Anastacia & Vangelis | The first World Cup in Asia; FIFA used both a pop song (Anastacia's Boom) and an instrumental anthem (Vangelis). |
| 2006 Germany | The Time of Our Lives | Il Divo & Toni Braxton | Operatic-pop styling; Shakira performed Hips Don't Lie at the closing ceremony as a featured artist. |
| 2010 South Africa | Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) 4.5B views | Shakira feat. Freshlyground | The most-watched World Cup song ever. Built on Cameroon's 'Zangalewa' by Golden Sounds; gave the tournament its visual identity. |
| 2014 Brazil | We Are One (Ole Ola) | Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez & Claudia Leitte | Designed for a tri-lingual audience; reception was mixed in host-country Brazil, where local samba-funk fan music outshone the official release. |
| 2018 Russia | Live It Up | Nicky Jam, Will Smith & Era Istrefi | Latin-pop again, with Will Smith fronting; underperformed both Waka Waka and La Copa de la Vida commercially. |
| 2022 Qatar | Hayya Hayya (Better Together) + Tukoh Taka | Trinidad Cardona, Davido, Aisha + Nicki Minaj, Maluma, Myriam Fares | Two designated tracks rather than one; neither reached the cultural penetration of Waka Waka or La Copa de la Vida. |
| 2026 USA, Mexico & Canada | Dai Dai New | Shakira feat. Burna Boy | The Shakira double. Released 14 May 2026, filmed at Maracana, Rio. The 17th official FIFA World Cup song. |
Note: FIFA's labelling of "official song" has varied tournament to tournament. Some editions designated a single anthem; others released multiple tracks under a banner. The list above follows FIFA's tournament archives and Sony Music's release-side credits.
With Dai Dai, Shakira becomes the only artist in FIFA history credited as the lead vocalist on two official World Cup songs. The closest analogue is on the writing and producing side, where the Italian songwriting camp behind Un'estate italiana stayed in FIFA's orbit through the 1990s, and the production team behind La Copa de la Vida worked on later tournament-adjacent releases. But on the artist credit, Shakira's two-anthem record is unique.
The case for her holding the slot twice is not surprising in retrospect. She was the right artist for Africa 2010: a global star with a back-catalogue in Spanish, English and Arabic, comfortable on stage with non-English-speaking collaborators, with a chant-driven musical instinct that lands in stadiums. She is, by the same logic, the right artist for a 2026 tournament hosted by three countries on a continent that consumes Latin music at scale. She also performed at the closing ceremony of the 2006 World Cup in Germany with Hips Don't Lie, a featured-artist slot rather than an official song, which is why Dai Dai is counted as her second anthem rather than her third.
The other repeat appearance worth flagging is Ricky Martin. La Copa de la Vida in 1998 is one of the modern era's two definitive World Cup songs (Waka Waka being the other), and Martin has performed at multiple later FIFA events. But he has not held the official-song slot twice. Shakira stands alone.
Across 17 tournaments the pattern is consistent. The official anthems that lasted (Italia '90, France '98, South Africa 2010) share three traits. The ones that did not (2014 Brazil, 2018 Russia, 2022 Qatar) miss at least one of them.
Shakira in 2010, Ricky Martin in 1998 and the Italia '90 pairing of Bennato and Nannini all arrived at the tournament with existing radio rotation, an existing tour and existing back-catalogue carrying the new release. The official song is amplified by the artist, not the other way round. The tournaments where the song was the artist's primary calling card (1986, 1994) struggled outside the host country.
Waka Waka's chorus is a chant. La Copa de la Vida's is a chant. Un'estate italiana resolves into a four-syllable refrain anyone can sing without speaking Italian. A World Cup song competes for a stadium of 80,000 people from 32 countries; the chorus has to clear that bar before the verses matter. Songs built on English-language verses without a chant-payoff (2018's Live It Up) hit a ceiling.
Waka Waka was released seven weeks before kickoff; La Copa de la Vida nine weeks; Un'estate italiana a full three months. Each had the streaming runway to enter the tournament already familiar. Songs that surface inside two weeks of kickoff (2022's Hayya Hayya was tight to the schedule) never get the seeding the format demands. Dai Dai shipped four weeks before kickoff, comfortably inside the working window.
Waka Waka was filmed in South Africa with African dancers; La Copa de la Vida tied to Paris and the French stadiums; Un'estate italiana to Italy itself. Dai Dai sits at Maracana in Rio. The songs that work give the audience a place to imagine the tournament before it begins. The official tracks that stayed off-location, or used a generic music-video setting (2018), never built that mental bridge.
Every official FIFA World Cup music video from 2010 onward is on YouTube on the relevant artist's channel: Shakira's official channels for Waka Waka and Dai Dai, Pitbull's for We Are One, and so on. For a curated home for the modern-era anthems and 2026 World Cup music coverage in one place, including the videos featured on this page, the WorldCuply.com YouTube channel collects the official releases alongside editorial coverage.
The WorldCuply YouTube channel: official music videos, editorial coverage of the 2026 tournament across Canada, Mexico and the United States, and the songs that defined every World Cup before it. Subscribe so the next anthem lands in your feed.
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