The Super Eagles were not at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Burna Boy was. Standing on the Estadio Azteca stage alongside Shakira in front of millions watching worldwide, he ensured Nigeria’s name rang out at football’s biggest event regardless.
When the opening ceremony of the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfolded at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on Wednesday evening, one of its most celebrated moments belonged to a Nigerian. Burna Boy, the Grammy-winning Afrobeats artist from Port Harcourt, performed the tournament’s official anthem alongside Colombian music icon Shakira in front of a packed stadium and a global television audience that stretched into the hundreds of millions. The performance placed Nigeria at the centre of the World Cup’s opening night in a way that the Super Eagles, absent from the tournament for the second consecutive time, could not.
The anthem, titled “Dai Dai,” was written and produced as a song of unity and celebration for a tournament that for the first time brings 48 nations together under one competition. The blend of Burna Boy’s Afrobeats energy and Shakira’s Latin pop style across the track reflects exactly the kind of cultural fusion that FIFA has sought to project across the ceremony and the competition as a whole. The performance at the Azteca brought together energetic choreography, synchronized dance routines, and the two artists sharing the stage for the song’s climactic moments, drawing enormous cheers from the crowd in a stadium that holds over 80,000 people. Fans following the World Cup and all related Nigerian football content can get the best Bet9ja pre-match offers through Bet9ja’s SIS page ahead of the tournament group stage.
What the Performance Means for Nigeria
The framing of a Nigerian artist performing on the World Cup’s opening night while the Super Eagles watch from home carries an unavoidable irony and an equally undeniable pride. Nigeria failed to qualify for the tournament. Nigeria’s music did not miss it. Burna Boy’s presence at the Azteca is a reminder that the country’s cultural footprint on the global stage continues to grow across every domain, including the highest visibility events in world sport, regardless of what the Super Eagles do or do not achieve on the pitch.
For Nigerian football supporters whose disappointment at the World Cup absence remains raw, the performance offers a complicated set of emotions. It is simultaneously a reason to feel present and a reminder of what is missing. Burna Boy’s stage presence, his engagement with a crowd that was there for football as much as for music, and the scale of the platform he performed on put Nigeria’s name in the mouths of billions who would not otherwise have associated it with this particular tournament. That matters, even if the team should have been there too. The latest Nigeria football news and all World Cup updates are available through FootballInNigeria.com.ng’s Bet9ja promotion code page.
The Wider Ceremony and Nigeria’s Second Presence
The opening ceremony in Mexico City was rich with cultural celebration. Alongside Burna Boy and Shakira, the event featured performances from Mexican acts including Maná, J Balvin, Danny Ocean, Los Ángeles Azules, and Belinda, each representing a dimension of the host nation’s musical identity. The ceremony was designed to set the tone for a tournament being jointly hosted by Mexico, Canada, and the United States the first World Cup to use a tri-nation hosting model and the first to feature 48 competing nations.
Nigeria’s presence at the opening extends beyond Mexico City. As the tournament’s opening events continue across all three host countries, the USA and Canada ceremonies will feature their own lineup of global performers, and among them is Rema another Nigerian Afrobeats star whose international profile has risen dramatically in the years since his breakthrough. The combination of Burna Boy at the Azteca and Rema at an upcoming ceremony gives Nigeria two of the tournament’s most visible musical moments, a cultural achievement that sits entirely independent of what happened in Rabat last November. Part of the proceeds from “Dai Dai” will support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which aims to improve access to education for underserved children worldwide, adding a philanthropic dimension to what is already one of the year’s most watched musical performances. All the latest Nigerian football and culture news is at Nigeria’s top Bet9ja promotion code page throughout the tournament.
📌 Did You Know?
- Burna Boy was born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu on July 2, 1991, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. He won his first Grammy Award in 2021 for Best Global Music Album for “Twice As Tall,” becoming one of only a handful of African artists to win in a Grammy category in which the competition spans the entire non-English-speaking world.
- The Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, where the opening ceremony was held, is one of the most iconic football venues in history. It is the only stadium to have hosted two FIFA World Cup finals, in 1970 and 1986, and has a capacity of over 83,000, making it one of the largest football stadiums in the Americas.
- Shakira previously performed at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, where her song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” became one of the best selling World Cup anthems in the tournament’s history. Her return to the World Cup stage in 2026 marks her second time performing the official tournament anthem, a distinction shared by very few global artists.
- Rema, whose real name is Divine Ikubor, is from Benin City, Edo State. His 2022 song “Calm Down,” particularly after its remix with Selena Gomez in 2023, became one of the most-streamed Afrobeats tracks in history and introduced his music to audiences across Latin America, where the 2026 World Cup partial hosting has significant cultural resonance.
- The “Dai Dai” anthem’s partial proceeds going to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund continues a tradition of World Cup anthems carrying social impact components. Previous World Cup songs have supported various FIFA Foundation projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America targeting youth development and community infrastructure.
- The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the first to feature 48 participating nations, up from the 32-team format used since 1998. The expanded format was approved by FIFA in 2017 and means more matches, more venues, and more countries represented than at any previous World Cup in the tournament’s 96 year history.
- Nigeria’s Afrobeats genre, which Burna Boy and Rema both represent, has become one of the fastest growing music movements in global popular culture over the past decade, with streams of Nigerian Afrobeats artists increasing by over 700 percent internationally between 2015 and 2025 across the major digital streaming platforms.
