Shakira ran onto the pitch at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on Thursday evening in a bright yellow top, white shorts, platform sneakers and a very large pair of dark sunglasses and performed Dai Dai, the official anthem of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, alongside Nigerian artist Burna Boy in front of 80,000 people.
It was her fourth World Cup performance. It was the live debut of the tournament's official song. It was, by most accounts, a solid opening to the biggest sporting event in the world.
And within about 90 minutes of it ending, a substantial portion of the internet had convinced itself the woman on that stage was not Shakira.
The body double conspiracy spread across X and TikTok Thursday night and picked up enough momentum by Friday morning that European outlets including Euronews were publishing formal debunks of it. The evidence presented by those pushing the theory, she looked different.
Her hair was lighter and slightly more reddish than some fans expected. The large sunglasses covered half her face throughout the performance.
Her stage movement was sportier and less overtly sensual than her iconic 2010 Waka Waka performance, the barefoot-on-the-grass moment that remains the standard against which every Shakira World Cup appearance is measured.
"Is that Shakira? She doesn't look like Shakira? Am I tripping?" one X user wrote. "Esa no es Shakira, who dat?!" wrote another.
A Spanish-language post that spread widely translated roughly to: "Don't tell me I'm the only one who thought that was Shakira's body double." One particularly committed theorist wrote: "Look how she misses the step when she sings Dai Dai. That's a double. Shakira lied to everyone."
Some threads named a Venezuelan Shakira impersonator known as Shakibecca, real name Rebeca Maiellano, as the supposed stand-in, noting she had worked in Mexico around the tournament. None of this is backed by any credible evidence.
FIFA's official broadcasts and high-resolution press photographs all credit Shakira. Her own Instagram had been posting behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage matching the live show's staging, costuming and choreography in the days before the performance.
The most elegant piece of debunking came from Euronews, which pointed out that Shakira has a small scar on her forehead visible in Associated Press photographs from a New York event in May 2026. The same scar is visible in the World Cup ceremony images.
Neither Shakira's team nor FIFA has issued a response, presumably because responding to a body double theory with a point-by-point rebuttal is not something that a reasonable communications strategy requires.
For the record: it was Shakira. She has been at more World Cups than her ex-husband Gerard Piqué. She will be at the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19 as well, headlining the halftime show alongside Madonna and BTS in a performance curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin. The sunglasses will probably still be on.