IShowSpeed Made History as the First Streamer to Perform at a FIFA World Cup Ceremony

If you told football fans five years ago that a 21-year-old YouTube streamer would one day take the pitch at the FIFA World Cup Final closing ceremony before 82,000 people, they would not have believed you. But that is exactly what happened on Sunday 19 July at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and IShowSpeed, born Darren Watkins Jr., made every second of it count.

Dressed in an all-white suit, Speed was the first performer to take the field at the closing ceremony ahead of the Spain versus Argentina final. He walked out alongside a troupe of drummers and dancers dressed in brightly coloured tracksuits, with the percussion section opening the performance before he stepped forward to deliver his song. The performance lasted three minutes, and the crowd of over 82,000 inside the stadium went with it from the first beat.

The song he performed was “World Cup (Champions),” a track from the Official FIFA World Cup 2026 Album that FIFA approached him about rather than the other way around. Released last month, the song has been a fixture at fan fests and stadiums throughout the tournament, and hearing it performed live on the pitch before the biggest match of the competition gave it a completely different weight. This was not the chaotic, hyperactive IShowSpeed of viral gaming streams and spontaneous backflips. This was a straight musical performance, delivered with a composure his regular audience might not have seen before.

Speed had been a fixture of this tournament long before Sunday’s ceremony, documenting his experiences at matches and Fan Fests throughout the competition, wearing split jerseys because his chosen teams kept losing, and begging Lamine Yamal to beat Argentina purely on the grounds of his Ronaldo allegiance. His livestream from the final alone clocked nearly 60 million cumulative views by the time it ended, which tells you everything about how invested his audience was in every moment of this tournament.

His performance kicked off a massive pre-match show featuring Post Malone, Robbie Williams, and Jennifer Hudson, before giving way to a historic 27-minute halftime spectacle headlined by Madonna, Burna Boy, Shakira, and Uganda’s Ghetto Kids. It made Sunday night at MetLife one of the most unforgettable crossovers between pop culture and football history.

Watch below

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Photo Credit: iShowSpeed/Instagram

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