There are football nights and then there are nights like this. Eighty thousand people packed into one stadium, fireworks in the sky and a Colombian woman in the middle of it all.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup opened at the Estadio Azteca on Thursday, June 11.
Maná, Belinda, J Balvin
The ceremony started just before 6 pm local time with a dance and theatrical performance tracing the roots of Mexican culture — colour, movement, a full house behind it. Then Maná took the stage and the noise inside the Azteca picked up fast.
Belinda, the Latin Grammy-nominated and about as popular as it gets in this country, followed, and the crowd went up another notch. Then J Balvin, who opened with “Que Calor” before doing his verse from Cardi B’s “I Like It.”
Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli also featured among the performers. An unusual bill, perhaps, but for a tournament held across three countries it made a kind of sense.
‘Dai Dai’
World Cup opening ceremonies can be hit and miss. This one landed.
When Shakira walked out with Nigerian star Burna Boy to perform “Dai Dai” — the official tournament song — the Azteca erupted. The song had crossed 100 million YouTube views just last week. The 80,000 people in the stadium knew every word and it was something else. Dancers circled a giant World Cup trophy replica on the pitch. Fireworks lit up the sky.
Shakira, four-time Grammy winner, delivered.
“It’s already a party in Mexico,” Ingrid Orozco, 40, one of the 80,000 inside the ground, told news agency AFP.
A stadium unlike any other
The Estadio Azteca hosted the 1970 final and the 1986 final — Pelé’s Brazil, Maradona’s Argentina, the Hand of God, the Goal of the Century. It has been renovated for this tournament but the history does not change.
With Thursday’s ceremony, it becomes the first stadium to host three separate World Cup editions.
104 games, one winner
From here it is 104 matches across the United States, Mexico and Canada — 48 nations, the biggest World Cup in history. The final is in New Jersey on July 19.
It started Thursday night in Mexico City.
