Shakira reveals ‘Dai Dai’ ft. Burna Boy as the official 2026 FIFA World Cup song, dropping May 14. Her second anthem after the iconic ‘Waka Waka’
Shakira is not just returning to the world’s biggest sporting stage. She is cementing a legacy that no other recording artist can claim. On Thursday, May 7, the Colombian superstar announced that “Dai Dai,” her collaboration with Nigerian Grammy winner Burna Boy, has been selected as the official song of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A one-minute teaser, filmed inside Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Maracanã Stadium, dropped across social media and confirmed what much of the industry had been speculating for months. The full track arrives May 14.
“From Maracaná Stadium, here is ‘Dai Dai,’ the @FIFAWorldCup Official Song 2026. Coming 5/14. We’re ready!” Shakira wrote in the caption alongside the clip, tagging Burna Boy directly. The teaser opens with four footballs arranged on the pitch, one for each World Cup in which Shakira has contributed a defining musical moment. It closes with an aerial shot of the stadium lit up with the words “We Are Ready,” a phrase that reads less like a tagline and more like a personal statement from an artist who has never been more in-demand.
A Song Built at the Intersection of Two Global Forces
The sonic direction of “Dai Dai” is already generating serious industry attention. Early previews describe the track as a reggaeton-tinged Afrobeats fusion, an instinctive blend of Shakira’s Latin pop architecture and Burna Boy’s signature genre-fluid approach. The pairing is not a gimmick. Burna Boy, who has spent the last several years building an internationally dominant catalog that crosses Afrobeats, hip-hop, and dancehall, is one of the few artists operating at a commercial and cultural scale that can match Shakira’s. The 2026 World Cup, the largest in FIFA history with 48 national teams and 104 matches spread across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, demands an anthem with that kind of reach.
The bar Shakira has set for herself is objectively difficult to clear. “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” the official song for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart and spent 42 weeks at No. 1 on Latin Digital Song Sales. It has since accumulated 4.5 billion views on YouTube and remains one of the most-streamed World Cup recordings in history. She also performed at the 2006 World Cup closing ceremony in Germany with “Hips Don’t Lie” and contributed “La La La (Brazil 2014)” to the 2014 tournament, making “Dai Dai” her fourth official FIFA World Cup moment.
Shakira’s Momentum Couldn’t Be Better Timed
The announcement lands at a commercial high point for Shakira personally. Just days before the reveal, she performed for more than two million people at the free Todo Mundo No Rio festival on Copacabana Beach, one of the largest single-artist gatherings in music history. Her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour has already sold over 2.5 million tickets globally and is expanding with new North American dates, reaffirming her standing as one of the most commercially powerful live artists on the planet.
The lyrical fragments surfaced in the teaser are direct and emotionally grounded: “You from the day you were born, here in the space you belong. What broke you once, made you strong.” For a tournament defined by the tension between national pride and global spectacle, the message lands precisely. “Dai Dai” drops in full on May 14, with the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to kick off in June across three host nations.
