Over the years, the songs that provide a soundtrack to the World Cup have become a significant part of the tournament, almost as important as the games. Some anthems have reached far beyond the field to offer a true moment of unity (“Cup of Life,” anyone?) As the 2026 games kick off, we surveyed all of the official FIFA songs and anthems (not soundtrack singles) since 1990, and highlighted the most inescapable bops, along with some that may have gotten lost to time. Check them out below.
‘The Time of Our Lives,’ Il Divo feat. Toni Braxton (2006)
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty ImagesFor the 2006 tournament, held in Germany, European classical group Il Divo and R&B icon Toni Braxton leaned into their strengths as musicians with a ballad-like entry into World Cup anthems, switching up the format of hype-up tracks. Against the swell of an orchestra, their voices unite to sing about the “glory and the pain” of making it to the big game.
Hayya Hayya (Better Together),’ Trinidad Cardona, Davido, Aisha (2022)
Shaun Botterill/FIFA/Getty ImagesThis song was named after the Arabic interjection for “let’s go” and packs all of that rousing energy into an Afrobeat pop song with Middle Eastern inflections. “You know we’re better together,” American singer Trinidad Cardona, Nigerian star Davido and Qatari singer Aisha all sing together in the final chorus, demonstrating the cross-cultural element inherent in World Cup music.
‘Gloryland,’ Daryl Hall & Sound Of Blackness (1994)
Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesThe last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup was in 1994, and that year, Daryl Hall was tapped to sing over “Gloryland,” inspired in part by Civil War-era song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Because, really, what screams U.S. patriotism more than half of Hall & Oates evoking a battle cry with a gospel choir in tow?
‘Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way),’ Santana, Wyclef Jean, Avicii, Alexandre Pires (2018)
Alex Livesey/FIFA/Getty ImagesSomething was in the air in 2014. With Carlos Santana, Wyclef Jean, Avicii, and Brazilian singer Alexandre Pires at the helm, this track blends genres from rock to EDM and even hints of samba. The anthemic quality is underlined by Wyclef Jean’s inspirational lyrics as he addresses underprivileged children across the world: “Ain’t no mountain you can’t reach /Grab a star and make a wish.”
‘We Are One,’ Jennifer Lopez, Pitbull, Claudia Leitte (2014)
Dennis Grombkowski/FIFA/Getty ImagesAfter the success of Shakira’s 2010 “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” two more Latin music icons decided to give the World Cup anthem a try. On the 2014 track, Pitbull lives up to his Mr. Worldwide moniker with signature whistles that perfectly blend against the Afro-Brazilian rhythms, while J-Lo delivers Boricuan bars in contrast to Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte’s sleek vocals. The song is a blast, but admittedly more reminiscent of mid-2010s club culture than soccer games.
‘El Rock del Mundial,’ Los Ramblers (1962)
picture alliance/Getty ImagesReal talk, we have Chilean rockers Los Ramblers to thank for kicking off all of the wondrous World Cup music. Back in 1962, when the tournament was hosted in Chile, the band released this festive rockabilly track ahead of the first game as a way to cheer on the national team with Chilean chants and fun riffs. Los Ramblers weren’t even being contracted by FIFA but it turns out that didn’t matter — people love a sports soundtrack, no matter what. “El Rock del Mundial” became an instant hit in South America (and still remains one of the best-selling records in Chilean music history), which planted the seed of an idea in FIFA’s mind.
‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),’ Shakira (2010)
Michelly Rall/Getty Images for Live Earth EventsIf Ricky Martin created the World Cup global hit blueprint, Shakira elevated the formula with the unifying “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” which blends Afro-Colombian elements with South African music styles. The track was inescapable in 2010; you didn’t even have to tune into any matches to hear it. In 2024, it became the most streamed FIFA World Cup song and even earned a Guinness World Record. “It’s one of my biggest songs of all time,” Shakira said earlier this year. “But beyond what it did for my music and career … it turned me into my mother.” On the set of “Waka Waka,” the superstar met professional football player Gerard Piqué, the father of her two children. After all of these years, Shakira continues to honor the song by making it a staple of her concert setlists.
‘The Cup of Life,’Ricky Martin (1998)
GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty ImagesRicky Martin literally changed the game with this samba-infused anthem. “La Copa de la Vida,” or “The Cup of Life” was the first official FIFA-sponsored song to skyrocket in popularity and turned into a global pop mega-hit, reaching Number One in 30 countries. With the vivacious track and its celebratory video, the Puerto Rican singer and former boy band member rocketed into stardom. But the impact of “La Copa de la Vida” extends far beyond that year’s tournament. At the 1999 Grammys ceremony, Martin delivered a monumental performance of the song, effectively launching Latin pop’s late Nineties explosion into high-gear. In his 2010 memoir, Me, Martin recognized the pivotal moment, writing, “It was a unique opportunity to introduce the charms of Latin music to the rest of the world.”
Holzman and Hughes at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.Courtesy of Ekko Astral
Holzman and Hughes in Brooklyn, May 2026.Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
There’s no immediate resolution in any of this. There’s no surrender either — and a lot of great escape. White’s slide guitar in “Dollar Bill” sounds like a National Steel on steroids until the solo, when it turns into what seems like a theremin gone postal. “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing” has a great pop-wise chorus closer to the Pretty Things than Son House. And don’t miss White’s wry aside to the White Stripes’ old creation myth in the second verse of “G.O.D.,” on the way to the real business at hand. “Well, it’s the beginning of the world now,” he declares at the song’s end. “Let’s do it all over again.”
Jay-Z has turned the 30th anniversary of his classic debut album into a major marketing event
Jay-Z Knows the Past Still Pays
There’s a pleasant absurdity to the advertisements for JAŸ-Z30 that are currently found across New York’s subway tunnels. Their dramatic imagery — a stark black backdrop pierced through the center with a pair of hands, presumably Jay’s, fixed into the famous Roc diamond — invites a kind of religious authority that feels a touch ironic for anyone who’s old enough to remember all types of handwringing over those very hand symbols only a few years ago. And maybe that’s the point. By now, nostalgia’s grip extends layers deep. So much so that you could find yourself waiting for the train, reminiscing on the days when people still made jokes about the so-called Illuminati.
Jay-Z’s months-long campaign commemorating the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt and the 25th anniversary of The Blueprint has indeed resurfaced the rapper-turned-mogul’s success story. Reasonable Doubt, released in 1996, positioned Jay as not only a resonant voice in hip-hop but also in the increasingly lucrative business around it. After major labels passed, the album was released independently through Roc-A-Fella Records and Priority Records, setting the tone for Jay’s career as a business…man.
And in the full-court press campaign around this summer’s anniversaries, culminating in this weekend’s trio of performances at Yankee Stadium, Jay’s business acumen is again at center focus. You’d be forgiven for throwing around buzzwords like “multichannel” or “cross-platform” to describe the slate of festivities. There was a Spotify-backed takeover of the J and Z trains; custom JAŸ-Z30 subway maps and a Google Maps guide; commemorative Brooklyn Public Library cards; and most recently Bowery Station and DUMBO pop-ups with archival footage and merch. (That these Yankee Stadium shows come on the heels of Taylor Swift’s wedding at MSG suggests some sort of mega-rich takeover of cultural institutions, but let’s leave that one for another day.)
The moves come as nostalgia continues to drive a considerable chunk of the music industry’s profits. In an era when old songs can circulate infinitely on streaming platforms, gaining new life in the form of everything from samples to memes, and when superfans are willing to spend on physical goods, limited merch, and live experiences, album anniversaries have become their own product launches. Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt campaign is only the splashiest recent example.
No wonder, then, that Beyoncé already appears to be setting the stage for her own run of commemorations for the upcoming 20th anniversary of her album B’Day in September. Over the weekend, she released her first new song in two years, titled “Morning Dew (Donk),” to tease the upcoming reissue. According to Luminate, older music still dominates attention, with only 43 percent of U.S. on-demand audio streams in 2025 coming from tracks released in the previous five years. This is also one reason why vinyl and physical formats have seen renewed value in recent years, with the RIAA reporting that vinyl sold 46.8 million units in the U.S. in 2025, compared with 29.5 million CDs. Luminate says superfans are 20 percent of U.S. music listeners and spend heavily on live events and physical merchandise; 73 percent of these fans purchase physical merch, versus 26 percent of general music listeners.
In today’s industry, having a major anniversary is like having a new product to promote, a way to participate in an already thriving marketplace for nostalgia. The demand is visible well beyond official artist stores: Vintage concert tees now trade as collectibles, with one 1967 Grateful Dead shirt selling at Sotheby’s for $19,300 and rare rap tees treated as wearable archives of hip-hop history. Anniversary campaigns give artists and labels a way to reclaim that energy, turning the secondary market’s appetite for old symbols into new, officially sanctioned products.
Jay-Z’s official anniversary store turns that logic into a menu of objects: a $1,500 collector’s crate, a $300 cassette box, $400 Yankees jerseys, and four-figure varsity jackets. Of course, Jay is far from alone when it comes to legacy acts cashing in on nostalgia. He’s more like one salient example of a much larger wave of artists and promoters marketing anniversary products that includes the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 30th anniversary super-deluxe edition, My Chemical Romance’s Black Parade stadium tour, and the returned Warped Tour, among many others.
Five years before Reasonable Doubt became the occasion for library cards, pop-ups, collector crates, and stadium spectacle, its 25th anniversary was marked by an NFT. In 2021, Sotheby’s and Roc Nation auctioned a one-of-one Derrick Adams artwork tied to the album, billed as the only official Jay-Z-authorized commemoration of the anniversary. Around the same time, Roc-A-Fella was in court over co-founder Damon Dash’s attempted sale of a Reasonable Doubt-related NFT, a dispute that ended with a judgment making clear that no shareholder could sell or dispose of an interest in the album — including through an NFT — without the company’s authorization.
That ownership question is becoming harder to avoid as music enters the AI era, where the archive is not only something to reissue, exhibit, or sell, but something that can be scraped, modeled, and trained on. Last week, SZA took to Twitter to express frustration with AI music company Suno, notably calling out Diplo by name as one of the company’s investors. “DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR VIBRANIUM !!! DO NOT TRAIN AI WITH YOUR GENIUS,” she wrote on Twitter. Her complaint was joined by Kenneth Blume, who said Suno’s workers were “stealing from countless struggling musicians.”
For an artist with a legacy as impactful as Jay-Z’s, the current anniversary boom feel like the latest phase of a longer project of deciding who gets to turn hip-hop history into intellectual property. Jay-Z’s legacy deserves preservation; few catalogs have made a stronger case for it. But the more that preservation arrives through limited-edition objects, auction platforms, luxury merch, and authorized experiences, the more it has to answer a harder question: When does protecting the archive become another way of extracting value from it?