The 2026 World Cup will be the first tournament to use semi-automated offside technology, putting a dozen cameras and rapid tracking software into live match decisions for the first time on the sport’s biggest stage. When the system sees a player clearly offside, it will tell the assistant referee through an earpiece, and play can move on without the same pause fans have grown used to.

That is why the change is getting attention now: the next World Cup is not just bringing a new field of teams and venues, it is also changing how one of soccer’s most contested calls will be handled. The system tracks movement at 50 stills per second and measures whether an attacker is beyond the second-to-last defender, a process designed to make the offside check faster and cleaner when the gap is obvious.

For Micheal Barwegan, the change is already familiar. Barwegan, who first began officiating at age 12 because he wanted to earn some pocket change, is part of an all-Canadian World Cup officiating crew and has worked increasingly often with referee Drew Fischer and assistant referee Lyes Arfa over the past two years. The three were together at the 2024 Olympics and last summer’s Club World Cup, where Barwegan first used the semi-automated system during Botafogo’s win over Paris Saint-Germain.

He says the technology can move faster than the eye on ordinary offside calls, but he is also careful not to oversell it. Barwegan said the system is not perfect, and he stressed that it does not turn the assistant referee into a passenger. The assistant still has to stay in constant contact with the referee for the whole match, and the call only comes after the offside-position player touches the ball.

That human checkpoint matters because the system does not behave the same way on every play. If it is absolutely certain, the earpiece gives an automated “offside, offside, offside.” If the call is closer, it says “delay.” If there is no clear offside, it says nothing at all, leaving the assistant referee to do the job as usual and let play continue when the picture is not clear.

Barwegan said the technology is “really, really good” and suggested it is as accurate as an assistant referee or better on normal offside calls, though he added that some of that edge comes from how it is programmed. The system is meant to remove doubt on the obvious ones, not replace the official standing on the line, and that is the detail that will matter in 2026. What remains unanswered is how many decisions at the tournament will actually be settled by the software and how often the match will still depend on the human eye.