Justin Bieber joins first-ever World Cup final halftime show
Justin Bieber will join Madonna, Shakira and BTS in FIFA’s first World Cup final halftime show, an 11-minute spectacle tied to a $100 million education fund.
Justin Bieber will join Madonna, Shakira and BTS in FIFA’s first halftime show at a World Cup final, turning the July 19 title match outside New York into an 11-minute broadcast spectacle built to reach far beyond soccer fans. FIFA has scheduled the show for Sunday, July 19, 2026, at New York New Jersey Stadium, the name it is using for MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The lineup now also includes Burna Boy, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the PS22 Chorus, the Staten Island elementary-school choir that will perform with Coldplay. Chris Martin of Coldplay is curating the show, which FIFA says is the first halftime performance in World Cup history. Justin Bieber, in a statement, said the World Cup “brings the world together” and that he was grateful to take part.
The halftime show is tied to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which is seeking to raise $100 million to expand access to quality education and football for children worldwide. FIFA said it is donating $1 from every ticket sold to World Cup 2026 matches to the fund, and it said more than $50 million had already been raised when Bieber was added to the roster. FIFA and Global Citizen say the performance will be broadcast live around the world.
Gianni Infantino has framed the production as more than a pregame or intermission act, saying it is intended to combine spectacle with humanitarian impact and to “touch the hearts of the people.” The scale of the production underscores how the World Cup final is being packaged as a global entertainment property as much as a championship match, with celebrity names, philanthropic messaging and sponsor-facing visibility folded into the sport’s biggest stage.
That shift is clearest in the structure of the event itself: a short, highly curated performance with Madonna, Shakira, BTS, Bieber, Burna Boy and Dudamel sharing the spotlight under a single FIFA and Global Citizen banner. For FIFA, the halftime show offers a way to widen the audience for the final and turn the tournament’s marquee moment into a global media event with its own commercial and cultural gravity.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
