Something fundamental has shifted at this year’s World Cup. Not just the format — 48 teams, 104 matches, three host nations — but the invisible infrastructure running underneath the spectacle. For the first time in the tournament’s history, artificial intelligence is not a back-office tool or a broadcaster’s experiment. It’s woven into nearly every layer of the competition: how goals are validated, how fans receive highlights, how referees make decisions, and how teams prepare for opponents.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico from June 11 to July 19, has become the most heavily instrumented sporting event ever staged. Sensors, cameras, machine learning systems, and generative AI tools are operating simultaneously — some visibly, some entirely behind the scenes — reshaping what it means to watch, play, and officiate football at the highest level.
This is a guide to all of it: what the technology actually does, how it works, where it falls short, and what it signals about where sport and AI are heading next.
The Smart Ball: Where the Data Actually Starts
Before any AI system can make a decision, it needs data. At World Cup 2026, that data starts with the match ball itself.
The official ball — the Adidas TRIONDA — contains an inertial sensor embedded at its core. That sensor transmits positional data 500 times per second to FIFA’s tracking systems, pinpointing the exact millisecond the ball is kicked, headed, or touched. This is not a minor technical upgrade. It resolves one of the most persistent problems in football officiating: knowing with certainty when a ball left a player’s foot.
In previous systems, cameras had to estimate the moment of contact, which introduced a small but consequential margin of error in tight offside calls. The connected ball removes that uncertainty entirely. It captures the kick point with a precision that cameras alone simply cannot match.
The ball needs to be charged for 90 minutes to last six hours of use — a detail that sounds mundane but reflects just how much computing power is now embedded in a piece of equipment that also has to hold its shape under a 90-minute professional match.
The connected ball is not new — versions of it were used at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the 2023 Women’s World Cup — but the 2026 version is more tightly linked to the decision-making systems around it, feeding data not just to officiating tools but to broadcast graphics, team analytics, and the broader data ecosystem that supports the tournament.
Semi-Automated Offside: The End of Flag Delays?
If one piece of AI technology has the highest visibility with fans at World Cup 2026, it’s the upgraded Semi-Automated Offside Technology, known as SAOT.
The offside rule has been football’s most contested technical call for generations. A player’s shoulder being millimetres past a defender’s hip can disallow a goal — and until recently, verifying that required video officials to manually freeze frames and draw lines, a process that could take several minutes and still spark disagreement.
SAOT was introduced at Qatar 2022 as a step toward automating this. The 2026 version goes significantly further.
How It Actually Works
Every one of the 16 venues is equipped with a semi-automated offside system featuring 12 dedicated high-speed tracking cameras. Those cameras track players continuously throughout the match, monitoring the positions of their limbs at a rate that captures far more detail than any human eye could process in real time.
Computer-vision systems model relevant body positions, while connected-ball data identifies the precise moment a pass is played. The system then alerts video officials when it detects a possible offside situation.
The threshold has also been tightened. In previous tournament trials, the automated voice was only triggered if an attacking player was at least 50 centimetres clear of the defensive line. FIFA has narrowed that threshold down to a razor-thin 10 centimetres for this World Cup.
Human referees remain in the loop — the system alerts the VAR team, which reviews the call before notifying the on-field official. The offside system is semi-automated: AI and sensors measure a player’s position and the moment of the kick, but human referees make the final decision, especially on whether an offside player interfered with play.
The 3D Avatar Upgrade
The part of SAOT that fans will notice most on their screens is the 3D avatar system.
Every single player participating in the tournament underwent a comprehensive full-body scan prior to kickoff to create highly accurate, lifelike digital avatars. FIFA says each scan takes approximately one second and captures precise body-part dimensions that help the AI track players even during fast movement or when camera angles are partially obstructed.
As FIFA President Gianni Infantino described the technology: the avatars “ensure precise player identification and tracking” and represent “a big advancement in semi-automated offside technology providing great images, faster decisions and a clear understanding by everyone.”
When an offside decision is reviewed, these avatars populate the 3D reconstruction shown on stadium screens and in the global broadcast, replacing the flat blue-and-yellow silhouette diagrams used at previous tournaments. The visual result is immediately clearer — fans can see exactly which body part crossed the line and why the call went the way it did.
Where the Technology Has Limits
SAOT is a meaningful improvement, but it’s worth being clear about what it cannot do.
The technology struggles when players are on the ground or positioned very close together. It also only applies to positional offside and not subjective calls requiring interpretation. Questions about whether an offside player “interfered with play” remain human judgement calls, which means controversy hasn’t been eliminated — it’s just been pushed to different types of situations.
Referee Body Cameras: Football From the Referee’s Perspective
One of the less-discussed but genuinely interesting additions to this World Cup is referee body cameras.
Referee body cameras will be used at all 104 matches, offering fans a view of the field of play as if they were present on the pitch themselves. This is not primarily a refereeing tool — officials aren’t watching their own footage during a match. It’s a broadcasting and transparency tool, giving television viewers and streaming audiences a perspective that has never been available at a major football tournament before.
The feeds are stabilised to compensate for movement, making the footage watchable rather than the shaky, disorienting clips that early body-cam experiments in sport produced. For fans watching from home, the referee-view angle adds a dimension of immediacy to set pieces, confrontations, and penalty decisions that standard broadcast cameras simply can’t capture from the touchline.
Personalized Highlights: Watching the Same Match Differently
Away from the pitch, one of the most significant changes at World Cup 2026 is happening on the devices fans carry in their pockets.
Broadcast and streaming platforms have spent years conditioning audiences to expect personalised content — recommendations, curated feeds, content that responds to individual preferences. Sports has lagged behind that expectation for a long time. A World Cup match still produces the same highlight package for a fan in Mumbai as it does for someone in São Paulo or Lagos. That’s starting to change.
AI-powered systems are able to generate customised match highlights based on a fan’s favourite teams, players, and interests. Instead of watching generic highlight packages, supporters can receive personalised content tailored to the moments that matter most to them.
One viewer might receive highlights focused on their favourite player. Another could see tactical analysis. A third might get an entirely different package optimised for their viewing habits.
AI tools capture goals, fouls, crowd reactions, skill moves, and controversial moments during matches. Within seconds, they can also package them into personalised clips for fans, rather than waiting for production teams to edit videos manually.
FOX One and the Personalisation Push
In the United States, broadcaster FOX has built its World Cup streaming platform — FOX One — around exactly this idea. FOX One is built so every fan can step into the FIFA World Cup 2026 through their own lens, without losing the shared experience that brings everyone together.
The platform’s AI-powered personalisation capabilities surface dynamically tailored recaps and previews based on a fan’s favourite teams, making it possible to follow the tournament as a casual viewer or as a deep tactical analyst without having to wade through content that doesn’t match your interests.
FOX One also includes Multiview 2.0, where fans can build their own command centre — combining simultaneous matches, alternate angles, commentary feeds, and real-time data — so they control what matters most without missing a moment.
This isn’t personalisation in the superficial sense of a homepage algorithm recommending a related video. It’s the live broadcasting experience itself becoming adaptive and individual — a significant departure from the one-signal-to-all model that has defined televised sport since its beginning.
AI Commentary and Language Access
Commentary is another area seeing genuine AI-driven change.
Broadcasters are already testing AI-supported commentary systems capable of delivering customised language feeds and tactical explanations during matches. Some supporters want tactical discussions, while others prefer emotional storytelling or detailed statistics. AI systems are beginning to make it possible for fans to choose a commentary style that matches how they naturally engage with football.
The language access dimension of this is particularly important for a tournament with the global reach of the World Cup. AI translation and localised commentary tools mean that a match can be accompanied by accurate, contextually appropriate commentary in languages that wouldn’t previously have warranted a full broadcast production — expanding the audience for the tournament into communities that have historically been underserved by international sports media.
Lenovo Football AI Pro: Levelling the Analytics Field
On the team side of things, one of the more consequential AI deployments at this World Cup is a tool called Football AI Pro, developed through FIFA’s partnership with Lenovo.
Lenovo is giving all 48 teams access to a “Football AI Pro” analytics tool trained on more than 2,000 football-specific metrics. For the sport’s biggest nations — the Brazils and Frances of the world, with large analytics departments and significant resources — this represents an incremental improvement to tools they already have access to. For smaller federations from Africa, Asia, or the Caribbean, it’s something closer to a step-change.
Historically, the resource gap in professional football analytics has been enormous. A well-funded European club or national federation can employ a team of data scientists, subscribe to proprietary tracking systems, and build bespoke tactical models. A smaller national team may have none of that. Football AI Pro narrows that gap by making a sophisticated, football-specific AI platform available to every participating team on equal terms.
The partnership also includes a generative AI platform designed to help participating federations access information and manage institutional knowledge more efficiently. While fans may never interact directly with these systems, many of the broadcasts, highlights, and digital experiences they consume will be influenced by AI-assisted workflows operating behind the scenes.
The larger question — whether this kind of analytical equalisation actually changes match outcomes, or whether elite teams simply adapt faster to new tools — is one that will play out across the tournament’s 104 matches.
Google Gemini and the Second-Screen Experience
For fans watching from home or following via their phones, Google has embedded its Gemini AI into the World Cup second-screen experience.
Google is putting its Gemini AI at the centre of the fan experience, with live scores on phone lock screens and AI-generated match visuals. For casual fans who don’t want to watch a full 90 minutes but do want to stay connected to the tournament’s narrative, this kind of ambient AI presence — a score notification that arrives without being requested, a match summary that appears when you pick up your phone — reshapes how people follow a live event.
The official FIFA World Cup 2026 app is also personalisation-forward, allowing fans to follow favourite teams and receive smart notifications for kick-offs, goals, cards, substitutions, and full-time results. These are not novel features in isolation, but combined with the personalised highlights infrastructure, they represent a coherent vision of a World Cup experience that is no longer a single shared broadcast but a personalised event that each fan experiences through their own filtered lens.
Stadium Intelligence: Digital Twins and Security
Beyond the pitch and the broadcast, AI is also operating at the infrastructure level.
Lenovo is running digital twins of all 16 stadiums for crowd and security management. A digital twin is a real-time simulation of a physical space — in this case, a full three-dimensional model of each stadium that ingests live data about crowd density, entry and exit flow, and operational conditions, allowing security and venue management teams to anticipate problems before they develop.
For a tournament of this scale — 48 teams, 104 matches, millions of spectators across three countries — the logistical complexity is staggering. AI systems that can model crowd behaviour, flag unusual patterns, and suggest operational adjustments are not a luxury at this level of event management. They are genuinely necessary.
Team base camp logistics, media shuttle operations, and accessibility services for fans with disabilities have all benefited from technology-enabled coordination. These are the unglamorous applications of AI that receive far less attention than offside avatars and personalised highlights — but they have a direct impact on the experience of hundreds of thousands of people attending matches in person.
The Data Volume Underneath Everything
It’s worth pausing to appreciate the sheer scale of data that World Cup 2026 is generating.
Player tracking systems produce positional information at 25 frames per second. Wearable sensors monitor heart-rate variability and physical load. Computer vision maps every touch and run. The connected ball adds 500 data points per second. This creates structured datasets orders of magnitude larger than those available even a decade ago.
Every AI system described in this article — from SAOT to personalised highlights to Football AI Pro — ultimately depends on this data infrastructure. The sophistication of the AI is only as good as the data flowing into it. And the 2026 World Cup has built a data capture architecture that is, by any measure, without precedent in the history of sport.
What Football Purists Are Actually Right to Worry About
It would be dishonest to discuss this technology without acknowledging the legitimate concerns that sit alongside the enthusiasm.
The 2026 World Cup will test whether supporters see the technology as a step towards fairness, or another layer between them and the spontaneity of the game.
Football’s appeal has never been purely technical. Part of what makes the sport so powerful globally is its unpredictability — a linesman’s wrong call that somehow becomes part of tournament lore, a moment of chaos that no algorithm anticipated. As more of the game is automated, tracked, and processed, there’s a genuine question about what happens to those moments.
There’s also the question of who controls the data. The tracking systems at World Cup 2026 generate granular positional and physical data about every player in every match. How that data is stored, who can access it, and whether players have meaningful control over their own biometric information are questions that sports governance bodies are still working through.
And on the fan experience side, personalisation has a shadow dimension. Curated highlight packages mean that two fans watching the same match may end up with genuinely different understandings of what happened — not because of bias or dishonesty, but because the algorithm showed each of them a different version of the event. The shared cultural experience of a World Cup goal felt simultaneously by millions of people is irreplaceable. The question is whether hyper-personalisation inadvertently erodes it.
Wrapping Up
The FIFA World Cup has always been a mirror of the world it plays out in — a reflection of geopolitics, economics, culture, and technology. The 2026 edition reflects a world in which artificial intelligence has moved from a specialist tool to pervasive infrastructure.
The connected ball, the 3D avatars, the personalised highlights, the stadium digital twins, the analytics platforms available to every team — these are not isolated experiments. They represent a coherent, deliberate attempt to rebuild the experience of the world’s most-watched sporting event around data, automation, and personalisation.
Some of it will improve the tournament noticeably. Offside decisions that used to take minutes will take seconds, and the visual explanations will be clearer than anything fans have seen before. Others — like truly personalised highlights at scale — are still maturing, and the versions available at this World Cup are the early iterations of what will become far more sophisticated over the next decade.
What’s certain is that the 2026 World Cup won’t be remembered only for who lifts the trophy. It will also be remembered as the tournament where AI stopped being a football novelty and became part of the architecture of the game itself.
