Before the World Cup began, the tournament opened with ceremonies and performances that reflected the host nations and the sport's global reach. Acts like FIFA mainstay Shakira, South African star Tyla, Blackpink's LISA, reggaeton artist J Balvin and more shared the stage with dancers and singers that reflected local histories.

This year, FIFA has taken even greater steps to bridge music and sport, offering up its first half-time show in support of its education fund with Global Citizen. It's a jam-packed line-up of Madonna, Shakira, BTS, Burna Boy and Justin Bieber, plus Gustavo Dudamel conducting the New York Philharmonic and Venezuela's Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, all squeezed into 11 minutes. (Don't forget the PS22 Chorus with Coldplay and the Muppets!). Add to that the recently announced closing ceremony performances - which involve Tom Cruise - and it's clear that FIFA is doubling down on making the conclusion of the World Cup about more than the game.

Tiffany Naiman, director of the Berry Gordy Music Industry Center at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, sees these efforts of FIFA and its partner, the Recording Academy, as a major moment for both industries.

A scholar of popular music whose research explores the intersections of music, media, live performance and the music industry, Naiman shared her perspectives with UCLA Newsroom on the significance of music at the World Cup. She examines how the performance lineup and the tournament's deep integration of music reflect an evolution that positions music as a central cultural force rather than simply entertainment.

What is the significance of music at the World Cup, especially as it hosts its first halftime show and its partnership with the Recording Academy for concerts and the official soundtrack?

The FIFA World Cup has always had music in its DNA, but what we're seeing now is a fundamental shift in strategy. FIFA is no longer treating music as a backdrop to the tournament - it's becoming a core pillar of the World Cup's global identity.

The 2026 tournament is particularly significant. Hosted across North America, it places the World Cup squarely within the world's most commercially sophisticated sports-and-entertainment market. The partnership with the Recording Academy reflects that ambition - bringing artist relationships, production expertise and genuine industry credibility into the fold.

A halftime show is symbolically important: it signals that FIFA envisions the World Cup not only as the world's premier sporting championship, but as the world's premier entertainment event. Music has always given the tournament its emotional texture - people remember the songs almost as vividly as the matches. FIFA is now building on that deliberately and at scale.

Some traditional football fans may view this as Americanization, and that's a fair conversation to have, but I'd frame it differently: this is globalization meeting commercial reality. The World Cup already unites billions of people across languages, cultures and borders - music is one of the few forces that can match that reach. FIFA is simply formalizing what has always been true.

What strikes you most about the musical acts that FIFA has lined up, especially for their first halftime show?

What FIFA has constructed for 2026 is, from a music industry standpoint, genuinely sophisticated - and worth examining carefully. The most striking feature of this lineup is the deliberate rejection of a single dominant Western pop anthem in favor of what I would describe as a globally distributed soundtrack architecture. That's a meaningful strategic evolution.

Shakira's return is central to understanding FIFA's intent. Her association with the tournament carries enormous cultural weight - "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" didn't just accompany the 2010 World Cup, it became embedded in the collective memory of it. Pairing her with Burna Boy for the official anthem - this year's "Dai Dai" - is particularly astute. Afrobeats is arguably the most globally ascendant genre of the past decade, and that collaboration creates a Latin-African musical dialogue that reflects the actual geography of football's fanbase in ways previous anthems have not.

The inclusion of BTS speaks to a separate but equally deliberate calculation - K-pop commands some of the most intensely engaged fandoms in the world, and FIFA is clearly prioritizing younger international audiences and Asian markets. Meanwhile, Madonna functions as an anchor of cross-generational legitimacy.

Justin Bieber's inclusion serves a slightly different function than Madonna's cross-generational anchor. Earlier this year, following his Coachella comeback, Bieber became Spotify's most-streamed artist in the world, overtaking Bruno Mars, proof that his commercial pull hasn't diminished, even without a steady stream of new releases. That makes him less a genre ambassador, the way Burna Boy or BTS are, and more a pop-mainstream constant: an artist whose presence signals sheer commercial scale.

There's also a host-nation logic at work: as a Canadian artist performing in a tournament staged across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, his presence quietly reinforces the same continental branding seen in the host-nation collaboration "Lighter." Uniting American, Mexican and Canadian artists in a single track is smart nation-branding, essentially encoding the tournament's continental identity into the music itself.

What I find most interesting is the structural model FIFA appears to be adopting - closer to a film franchise soundtrack or streaming playlist than a traditional sporting anthem. An 18-track album spanning Afrobeats, reggaeton, country, K-pop, and Middle Eastern pop is not incidental. It reflects an understanding that in the streaming era, cultural reach is built through genre diversity and algorithmic discoverability.

FIFA, in short, appears to be treating the soundtrack as a mirror of the tournament: plural, global, and deliberately constructed to leave no major market unaddressed.

Is it normal for the Recording Academy to partner with a sports association like this, or vice versa?

The convergence of the music and sports industries has become an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary entertainment culture, particularly in the context of major global events. It is therefore unsurprising that organizations such as the Recording Academy would pursue institutional partnerships with properties like the FIFA World Cup.

Both industries are driven by overlapping strategic imperatives: the pursuit of expansive international audiences, the monetization of live-event culture, the cultivation of sponsorship revenue and the maximization of streaming and social media engagement. High-profile ceremonial moments - opening performances, halftime shows and official tournament anthems - serve as natural intersections where these interests align.

This dynamic is well-documented across the cultural landscape. FIFA has a sustained history of commissioning major recording artists for official tournament compositions and ceremonies. Similarly, the NFL's Super Bowl has evolved into as much a music industry event as a sporting one, while the Olympic Games routinely integrate musicians and entertainment brands into their programming. Awards organizations, for their part, have progressively expanded their institutional remit beyond the traditional awards ceremony format, seeking relevance across a broader range of cultural and media contexts throughout the calendar year.

For the Recording Academy in particular, this outward expansion reflects a deliberate strategic orientation - one aimed at maintaining cultural centrality beyond the annual Grammy season. The organization already maintains partnerships with major corporations, streaming platforms, gaming companies and entertainment brands. Within this context, a World Cup collaboration is not anomalous but rather consistent with broader industry trends: the FIFA World Cup is among the rare global spectacles that commands an audience comparable in scale and international reach to that of the Grammy Awards themselves.