2010 FIFA World Cup Final

Lore & Background

By the summer of 2010, Shakira had already embedded herself in the cultural fabric of the World Cup. Her duet with South African group Freshlyground, "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)," had spent weeks at the top of global charts, and the follow-up, "La La La (Song of the World Cup)," had become a stadium sing-along. When the tournament reached its climax at Soccer City, the expectation was that the final's closing ceremony would be a brief formality. Shakira turned it into a spectacle.

The production leaned into the tournament's African identity: warm amber and gold lighting, choreography that wove in Zulu-inspired movement, and a massive animated figure that roamed the pitch alongside her, giving the performance a playful, almost storybook quality. The crowd of roughly ninety thousand fans, many draped in red, white, or orange, swayed through the verses of "Waka Waka" before the chorus erupted into a full-throated sing-along. The energy was less a concert and more a communal ritual—football's universal language meeting music's.

In the broader Shakira canon, the Johannesburg performance sits between the intimate, guitar-driven sets of her album tours and the larger-than-life spectacle of her later stadium shows. It is the moment where her identity as a global pop artist and her genuine connection to the communities she sang for merged into a single, unrepeatable image: a woman in a golden outfit, arms raised, a continent's stadium roaring beneath her.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights dimmed to a low amber. Ninety thousand voices fell to a murmur, then a hum, then—nothing. Shakira stood at the center of the pitch, the grass still bearing the scuff marks of Iniesta's decisive touch, and waited. A single drum beat. Then another. The animated leopard figure lumbered out from behind the goal, its eyes glowing, and the stadium exhaled a collective "ooh." She snapped her fingers, the band kicked in, and the first syllable of "Waka Waka" hit the air like a spark thrown into dry grass. Within four bars, every section of Soccer City was on its feet, waving flags, clapping in four-four time. She didn't just perform for the crowd; she performed for the cameras locked onto her from every living room on Earth, and for the two teams still in their dressing rooms, ears pressed to the speakers, grinning. When the final chorus rolled, she threw her arms wide and the sound that came back from the stands was not applause—it was a roar, raw and uncontained, the kind of sound that makes a singer close her eyes and let the moment simply fill her up.

Reader's Guide

The closing-ceremony set was built around two songs: the tournament's official anthem "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" and the follow-up "La La La (Song of the World Cup)." The staging leaned into a warm, sun-drenched palette—gold, amber, and deep earth tones—evoking the African landscape without resorting to cliché. A large animated character roamed the pitch alongside Shakira, adding a playful, almost theatrical dimension to what was otherwise a tight, high-energy pop set.

Choreography was sharp and percussive, with dancers in coordinated outfits moving in syncopated patterns that echoed the song's rhythmic drive. Fire effects and pyrotechnics punctuated the transitions between the two numbers, and the lighting design shifted from intimate spotlights during the verses to full-stadium washes during the choruses, pulling the entire crowd into the performance.

The most memorable moment for many fans was the final chorus of "Waka Waka," when Shakira opened the floor to the audience. For a few seconds, the boundary between performer and spectator dissolved, and Soccer City became one enormous, singing organism. It was a small set by concert standards, but its emotional weight—capping a month of football, a continent's pride, and a global summer—made it feel enormous.

Did You Know?

• "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" was co-written and performed with South African band Freshlyground, grounding the global anthem in a distinctly local musical voice.
• The 2010 World Cup was the first held on African soil, and Shakira's dual-song set was designed to honor that milestone by weaving African rhythmic patterns into a pop structure.
• Soccer City, the venue for the final, had just been completed for the tournament and had hosted only a handful of matches before Shakira's closing-ceremony performance, making the crowd's energy especially raw and unpoli
• The performance was broadcast to an estimated global television audience in the hundreds of millions, making it one of the most-watched live musical appearances of the decade.