Shakira gets the stadium dancing with World Cup anthem 'Dai Dai'

Dubai: Shakira makes the whole stadium move.

Shakira's halftime slot centred on "Dai Dai," the official 2026 World Cup anthem she recorded with Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy. Surrounded by dancers dressed in yellow, she had the crowd moving along to the song from the first beat, exactly the kind of collective, everyone-dance-together moment she'd promised in the build-up.

This wasn't a last-minute addition to her set. Shakira spent weeks ahead of the final asking fans to send in dance videos to "Dai Dai," saying she wanted to bring as many of them onto the stage as she could. She specifically invited Uganda's Ghetto Kids, a viral dance troupe of children aged five to thirteen from Kampala's Katwe slums, who responded that performing with her would be "a dream come true" for them and for Uganda.

In her own words ahead of the show, she called the whole moment "pretty historic," and admitted she'd been thinking hard about how to make her final performance feel distinct from her opening ceremony set back in June, where she and Burna Boy first debuted "Dai Dai" at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.

This is Shakira's third decade tied to the tournament. She performed at the 2006 closing ceremony in Berlin, wrote "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" as the official 2010 anthem, and has now written and performed "Dai Dai" for 2026, giving her a rare double appearance at both ends of the same World Cup. "Dai Dai" itself currently sits at No. 1 on Billboard's global charts, so the song had momentum behind it before she'd even stepped on stage tonight.