J Balvin debuts lemon-yellow Air Jordan 4 at World Cup opening
J Balvin turned the World Cup opening into a sneaker launch, unveiling a lemon-yellow Air Jordan 4 with croc texture and his upside-down smiley.
J Balvin did not just wear a new sneaker onto a stage. He turned the Mexico City opening ceremony into a full-court collision of football, celebrity and sneaker culture, using the World Cup’s biggest spotlight to pull the Air Jordan 4 “Lemonade” out of leak season and into the global frame.
The pair is all yellow, but not flat or sleepy about it. Sneaker News described croc-textured uppers and backtabs, with Balvin’s upside-down smiley logo stamped on the heel tabs, details that give the shoe some bite beyond the obvious monochrome flex. It is the third Air Jordan 4 colorway tied to Balvin so far, which matters because Jordan Brand collaborations live or die on whether the next version feels like a continuation or a reset. This one lands somewhere in between: familiar enough to read as Balvin, but loud enough to catch stage light from the cheap seats.
That stage was Mexico City Stadium, where FIFA said the opening ceremony began at 11:30 local time on June 11, 2026, 90 minutes before kick-off. Gates opened four hours early, a very FIFA reminder that the ceremony was never just an intro, but part of the event’s machinery. Balvin shared the lineup with Ryan Castro, while Alejandro Fernández sang the Mexico national anthem, Tyla handled South Africa’s anthem and Salma Hayek Pinault appeared as a FIFA World Cup 2026 Ambassador to welcome fans. FIFA framed the whole production as the start of the biggest FIFA World Cup in history, and the styling onstage matched that scale: national symbols, pop-star choreography and one very aggressively colored sneaker.
Balvin had already teased the unreleased pair on Instagram before taking it public, which only sharpened the online temperature around a shoe sneaker circles had been tracking since late 2025 leak chatter. The model has also been tagged with a projected Fall 2026 release, a reported $225 price and style code IW2872-700, while one report pegged it for September 25, 2026 under the “Multi-Color” name even as the color description kept pointing back to “Lemonade/Lemonade.” That naming mess is almost beside the point now. On stage, the shoe worked as a prop, a punchline and a flex all at once.
Whether the “Lemonade” pair has enough design distinction to last beyond the ceremony is the real question. The croc texture and smiley heel tab help it avoid looking like just another bright Jordan made for Instagram. But the color is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and if the World Cup moment fades, Jordan Brand will need the sneaker to hold up without the pyrotechnics, the anthem lineup and Balvin’s global pop-star halo around it.
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