Justin Bieber has joined the lineup for the first World Cup half-time show, a Super Bowl-style break scheduled for 19 July that will last just 11 minutes. The show will close the 2026 World Cup in New York and also features Madonna, Shakira and BTS.
The length is short because the performance is being built into the tournament’s own clock, not stretched into a concert slot. Football’s half-time pause is fixed, and that leaves room for only a tightly run set even with Burna Boy, Gustavo Dudamel, the PS22 Chorus featuring Coldplay, and the Sesame Street muppets also set to appear.
Bieber’s addition is the headline because it gives the debut show a bigger pop pull at a moment when the tournament is already moving toward its end. He said the Fifa World Cup brings the world together in a way nothing else can, and his return to the stage this spring after cancelling his Justice world tour following health issues makes the booking feel like more than a cameo.
The show is also doing a second job. It is tied to the Fifa Global Citizen Education Fund, which is working to raise $100m for children worldwide, so the 11 minutes are meant to carry both spectacle and fundraising. Chris Martin curated the half-time show, which is why the lineup mixes Bieber with established acts and a children’s chorus instead of treating it like a single-artist concert.
That fundraising goal is the part that gives the production its structure. With only 11 minutes, every appearance has to be brief, and that is the trade-off: the tournament gets a first-ever half-time event, but the format is constrained by the same time limit that makes it news in the first place. The set is due on 19 July, and that is the date readers should watch if they want to see whether football’s biggest stage can also handle a pop show without losing the match’s rhythm.
