Madonna, BTS and Shakira headlined the first ever halftime show at a FIFA World Cup final on Sunday, sharing an 11-minute medley at the New York New Jersey Stadium with Justin Bieber, Burna Boy and, somewhat improbably, the Muppets.
Curated by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, the show aired live during the championship match between Argentina and Spain, marking the first time in the tournament’s history that the final has been interrupted for a musical performance.
Fitting so many stars into eleven minutes meant no one got much space.
Most of the performers had about two minutes on the track, and in Madonna’s case somewhat less than that.
The 67-year-old opened proceedings in a pre-recorded segment in which she rode a dune buggy through the tunnels under the stadium with Brazilian legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho at the wheel, singing a reworked version of her 2000 hit Music laced with bits of Disco Inferno and Danceteria.
By the time she actually appeared for the live audience, the song was essentially finished. She stood up and handed it over.
What followed came thick and fast.
Gustavo Dudamel, the outgoing Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor, led musicians from the New York Philharmonic and Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra through Seven Nations Armywith the company of Iranian violinist Bijan Mortazavi and the Muppets’ house band, Electric Mayhem.
BTS then took the field to a soccer theme Dynamitecomplete with rewritten lyrics before Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt appeared in character as Ted Lasso and Coach Beard to introduce the next act.
Their stand-in was Bieber, 32, who stripped back for a solo acoustic reading Everything Hallelujah from last year Swag II.
Shakira closed the star turn with Burna Boy, the pair reuniting after their performance at the tournament’s opening ceremony in Mexico City last month to perform Dai Daithe official song of the 2026 World Cup, backed by Uganda’s Ghetto Kids in bright yellow.
The finale belonged to more than fifty fifth graders from PS22 in Staten Island, who sang We dancean original Coldplay song written for the occasion, joined by the band, Australian singer Emmanuel Kelly and even more Muppets.
The length of it all had been a talking point for weeks, and the numbers explain why.
The performance itself came in seconds over its eleven-minute slot, but the break as a whole ran to 27 minutes and 22 seconds, the longest in World Cup history, and well beyond the maximum 15-minute stoppage that International Football Association Board rules entitle players to.
Not all were won.
Wayne Rooney, on comment duty for BBCoffered a scathing verdict: “I like a lot of them artists, but I thought it was crap.”
Shakira, for her part, had been honest beforehand about how loose it all still was.
“It will be a joint halftime show,” she shared The capital’s evening show with Jimmy Hill on July 8.
“It’s going to be pretty historic, five great artists. Well, four great artists plus me.”
She admitted she was still figuring out how to make it feel different from her opening ceremony, and that the running order was being figured out almost until the last minute, she said, as curious as anyone about how it would turn out.
The day had begun at a much gentler pace.
Post Malone headlined a pre-show that started 90 minutes before kick-off and ran through Wow, Sunflower featuring Swae Lee, and a new track, Chrome Heartbreakerteases his long overdue Eternal Buzz album.
Streamer singer iShowSpeed performed across a projected New York skyline.
Robbie Williams brought Nicole Scherzinger and Laura Pausini alongside Wishthe official FIFA anthem he wrote before escorting them hand in hand.
Jennifer Hudson sang the US national anthem with a live band and Tom Cruise addressed the crowd before kick-off.
“Football is a language spoken without words, a force that unites people,” he said.
The commercial and charitable side is significant.
The halftime show supports the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which expands access to education and sports programs for children in underserved communities.
With FIFA donating a dollar from every ticket sold across all 104 matches in the tournament, the foundation has already raised $60 million towards a $100 million goal.
On 16 July, Global Citizen and FIFA named 31 beneficiaries in 18 countries.
The 80,000-seat stadium was close to full, with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet, Pharrell, Matt Damon, Adrien Brody and Will Ferrell among those watching.
Despite all the impact on the pitch, the loudest noise of the afternoon came from the football.
