A cavalcade of international stars headlined the World Cup's first-ever halftime final show
With President Trump in attendance, an all-superstar lineup that included Madonna, BTS, Justin Bieber and Burna Boy felt a little more political than it might have otherwise.
The World Cup’s first-ever halftime final show brought together an unusually stacked roster of global stars, turning the event into something closer to a pop-culture summit than a standard sports intermission.
According to a monitored public feed from NPR News, the performance featured Madonna, BTS, Justin Bieber, Burna Boy, Shakira, Chris Martin and even the Muppets. The lineup alone made the spectacle stand out, but the atmosphere appeared even more charged because President Trump was in attendance. The feed summary suggests that presence gave the show a more political tone than it might otherwise have had.
Halftime entertainment at a World Cup final is itself a notable shift, and the choice to fill that slot with artists spanning multiple genres and regions underscored the event’s global ambitions. Madonna brought one of the biggest names in pop history. BTS added one of the most influential acts in contemporary music. Justin Bieber and Chris Martin represented widely recognized mainstream pop and rock appeal, while Burna Boy and Shakira added further international range. The inclusion of the Muppets introduced a playful and unexpected element to the lineup.
The result, based on the feed summary, was a performance designed to grab attention far beyond the stadium. Even without additional detail on the staging or set list, the artist roster points to a carefully curated show meant to resonate with a worldwide audience and mark a first for the tournament’s final.
The public-feed report does not provide a fuller account of the performance itself, but it does show how the event blended entertainment, sports and politics in a single high-profile moment. With so many major names on one stage and a sitting president in the crowd, the halftime show became part of the broader conversation around the final, not merely a break between halves.
This article is based on a monitored public feed and includes attribution to the original report near the end.
Source: NPR News - https://www.npr.org/2026/07/19/nx-s1-5888626/world-cup-halftime-final-show-bts-madonna-shakira-burna-boy-chris-martin-muppets-bieber
