Entertainment 15 July 2026

The World Cup final halftime is stretching to 20 minutes, and football's own rulebook says it can't

FIFA wants roughly a 20-minute halftime at the 2026 World Cup final to fit the Madonna, Shakira and BTS show. The laws of the game say the interval should not exceed 15 minutes.

Halftime in football lasts 15 minutes. It has done for decades, it is written down, and on Sunday FIFA is going to drive straight past it.

The 2026 World Cup final carries the first halftime show in the tournament’s history, and a show that size does not fit into a quarter of an hour. The number doing the rounds is closer to 20 minutes — the usual 15 plus whatever the production needs to build and strike a stage in the middle of the pitch.

How long is halftime supposed to be in football?

The laws of the game are written by the IFAB, the body that decides what football is and isn’t, and they are not vague: the interval should not exceed 15 minutes. It is all there in the IFAB’s official laws.

So the biggest match in the sport will be played around a halftime the sport’s own rulebook does not allow for. Nobody is going to void the result over five minutes of Madonna, but it is exactly the sort of detail that makes purists choke on their crisps.

Why does FIFA want 20 minutes?

Because the bill is too big to rush. We have already covered how Madonna, Shakira, BTS and Justin Bieber are playing the final’s interval, curated by Chris Martin. Infantino talked about 11 minutes of music, a nod to the 11 players on each side — but 11 minutes of show is not 11 minutes of halftime. Someone has to build it, play it, take it down and hand back a pitch worth playing on.

Then there is the reason nobody says out loud: 20 minutes of live global attention is the most valuable ad break ever sold in football. The Super Bowl worked this out 30 years ago.

For the players, 20 minutes standing still is an age — muscles cool, rhythm goes. If anyone starts the second half badly in the biggest final in the game, we all know what gets the blame.

The match is Sunday. So, apparently, is the concert.

By Lucy Bennett

Image: Thecoolone1223 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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