FIFA and Lenovo have placed artificial intelligence at the centre of how the 2026 World Cup will be run, officiated and watched. The announcements — Football AI Pro, AI-enabled 3D player avatars, an updated Referee View and an Intelligent Command Centre — were presented by FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang at Lenovo Tech World 2026, held on the opening day of CES at Sphere in Las Vegas.
This is the first World Cup to be hosted across three countries simultaneously — Canada, Mexico and the United States — with 48 teams, 104 matches and over 180 broadcasters. FIFA is managing operations directly, without local organising committees absorbing the load as in previous tournaments. That shift in operational scale is what makes AI infrastructure not a luxury, but a necessity. Six billion people are expected to watch. Seven million are expected to attend. The tech that makes it run is worth understanding.
Lenovo is the Official Technology Partner for both the FIFA World Cup 2026 and the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027. The partnership spans AI-enabled devices, infrastructure, software, solutions and services across FIFA’s two flagship competitions. Below is a complete breakdown of each technology, how it works and what it actually does on the pitch and behind the scenes. For more on how AI is being integrated at enterprise scale, see our coverage on Palantir and NVIDIA’s Sovereign AI architecture.
THE PITCH
RUNS ON AI
FIFA × Lenovo · World Cup 2026 · June 11 – July 19
104 matches. 48 teams. 3 countries. One AI backbone. Here is how FIFA’s Football AI suite is built to hold it all together.
Explore Each Technology
Football AI: Four Systems,
One Tournament
Each technology below solves a different, specific problem — from levelling the analytics gap between rich and small football nations, to making a VAR offside call actually understandable to a stadium crowd.
A generative AI knowledge assistant built on FIFA’s Football Language Model — trained on hundreds of millions of FIFA-owned data points. It gives all 48 competing teams access to the same pre- and post-match analytical outputs: text breakdowns, video clips, charts and 3D visualisations, in multiple languages.
The tool addresses a clear imbalance. A well-funded nation has a full analytics department. A team at its first World Cup does not. Football AI Pro gives both the same data starting point.
It cannot be used during live play — only before and after matches. FIFA has confirmed the tool will eventually be opened to fans and to its 211 member federations beyond 2026.
Every player at the FIFA World Cup 2026 will be scanned to build a precise 3D digital model capturing their actual body-part dimensions. Each scan takes approximately one second.
During matches, these models track players through fast or obstructed movements more reliably than the current system. When an offside call goes to VAR, the system uses the player’s actual 3D model to generate imagery that is both more precise and easier for viewers to follow. The 3D animations appear in stadiums and in global broadcast feeds.
The technology was tested at the FIFA Intercontinental Cup 2025, with CR Flamengo and Pyramids FC players scanned ahead of their FIFA Challenger Cup match. The trial ran throughout the match, confirming the system’s readiness.
An updated version of the body-camera system first trialled at the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup in 2025. AI-powered stabilisation software smooths footage from the referee’s camera in real time, removing the motion blur that made the original difficult to watch during fast play.
The result is a stable, first-person perspective from the centre of the pitch, broadcast live to global audiences. Alongside giving fans a view of the referee’s sightline, the system makes officiating decisions more transparent — which matters for VAR, where audience confusion about decisions has been a persistent issue since the technology’s introduction.
Lenovo’s infrastructure supports FIFA’s VAR Technology Provider, Hawk-Eye Innovations, for the 2026 tournament, building on a successful implementation at the FIFA Club World Cup 2025.
The operational system most people will never see, but that the entire tournament depends on. FIFA’s Intelligent Command Centre connects real-time data from all functional departments, matches, venues and broadcasters across three countries in one operational view.
The system generates AI-powered daily summaries for FIFA officials, monitors all tournament operations in real time, and helps staff respond to trends as they emerge. Lenovo’s digital twin technology creates virtual replicas of each venue, enabling FIFA to monitor venue situations without being physically on-site.
Smart Wayfinding technology connects cities, fan zones, landmarks and all 16 host venues into one interactive system, using real-time AI navigation to help the expected seven million attending fans move across the three-country tournament footprint. For more on enterprise AI scale, see our piece on Google’s $32B Wiz acquisition.
How It Works
Football AI Pro: From Data to Insight
Four steps from raw data to a usable pre-match or post-match analysis output for any of the 48 competing teams.
The FIFA World Cup in 2026 is going to be the greatest show ever on planet Earth. Seven million people will attend the 104 matches — dozens of millions of fans will travel to North America, six billion people will watch it from home, and the world will stand still.
— Gianni Infantino, FIFA President · Lenovo Tech World 2026, Sphere, Las Vegas
Host Nations · Confirmed Venues
Where the World Plays: All 16 Cities
All 16 confirmed FIFA World Cup 2026 host cities across USA (11), Canada (2) and Mexico (3). FIFA’s Intelligent Command Centre connects every venue in real time. Filter by country or browse all venues below.
Showing all 16 confirmed host cities
Key Questions
What People Want to Know
Factual answers on how each Football AI technology works, who it benefits and what is planned after 2026.
Coverage Summary
The “Football AI” suite — Football AI Pro, AI-enabled 3D player avatars, the updated Referee View and the Intelligent Command Centre — was announced at Lenovo Tech World 2026 by FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang at Sphere in Las Vegas. The technologies are built to support the 104-match, 48-team, three-country tournament running from June 11 to July 19, 2026, across 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Football AI Pro, built on FIFA’s Football Language Model, was described as providing all 48 teams with equal pre- and post-match analytical access. The 3D player avatar system, tested at the FIFA Intercontinental Cup 2025, was confirmed for semi-automated offside technology. The Referee View system was built on the iteration first trialled at the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup 2025. The Intelligent Command Centre was covered as the operational AI layer connecting all venues and departments in real time, with FIFA confirmed as running all operations directly for 2026. Full details are available in FIFA’s official release.
For related technology coverage, see our pieces on Palantir and NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, and Google’s Android weather app changes for 2026.
