FIFA has always had a complicated relationship with spectacle, but the 2026 World Cup final halftime show managed to be genuinely, almost impressively, strange.
The biggest football match on the planet deserved a moment. What it got was something else entirely — a star-studded, baffling, overloaded production that somehow felt both too much and not enough at the same time.
A Lineup Nobody Quite Asked For
The centrepiece of the whole thing was Shakira, which, fair enough — she's one of the few artists on earth who can claim genuine World Cup pedigree. Her custom Roberto Cavalli outfit came encrusted with 200,000 Swarovski crystals. Two hundred thousand. On one outfit. For a halftime show. That detail alone tells you everything about the register this was pitched at.
And then there was Post Malone. Posty didn't just show up at the final — he was given a pre-show slot to himself, which is either a sign of genuine star power or a scheduling decision made by someone who's never sat through a football crowd waiting for a game to start. We'll let you decide. If you've been following his recent musical pivot, [he's been teasing a return to hip-hop](/getohedz/music/post-malone-teases-return-to-hip-hop-8216that-one-mofo-that) — whether the World Cup stage helped that cause is debatable.
The Muppets were apparently involved at some point. The Muppets.
When the Spectacle Swallows Itself
There's a version of a World Cup halftime show that makes sense — something rooted in the host nation's culture, something that acknowledges the global scale of the moment without trying to replicate a Vegas residency in twenty minutes. This wasn't that. This was an attempt to grab every demographic simultaneously and, in doing so, fully commit to none of them.
The broader context didn't help the vibe either. Donald Trump was present at the final and reportedly got booed, which became its own news cycle running parallel to everything happening on the pitch. By the time the halftime entertainment arrived, the crowd already had a lot to process. Adding a maximalist pop spectacle on top of that wasn't exactly mood reading.
It's a tension we keep seeing in major sporting events — the desperate need to manufacture a "cultural moment" that clips well on social media, rather than letting the occasion breathe. The irony is that [the World Cup had no shortage of genuine viral moments](/getohedz/football/ranking-the-world-cups-best-viral-moments) that nobody had to engineer. The real stuff happened by itself.
Our Take
None of this is to say Shakira was bad — she's a performer of genuine calibre and 200,000 crystals doesn't sew itself. But the overall shape of what FIFA assembled was chaotic in a way that felt less like boldness and more like indecision. Too many names, too many tonal registers, not enough coherence.
The World Cup final is the most-watched sporting event on earth. It doesn't need saving by a halftime show. It needs a halftime show that knows its place. This one didn't. It arrived like it was the main event, outstayed its welcome, and left people more confused than energised.
Memorable, yes. For the right reasons? Not particularly.