Putting the ball in the back of the net isn’t just about skill anymore. At the Fifa World Cup 2026, technology will track every kick.

It all begins on the field with the Adidas Trionda, the tournament’s official match ball. Its name means “three waves” in Spanish, a reference to the three host nations: Canada, Mexico, and the US. While it looks like a regular football, at its core is sophisticated technology. One of its four panels houses a fast 500Hz motion sensor chip.

The ball knows its exact position in 3D space. Officials will keep a bunch of these smart balls fully charged and ready on the sidelines for each match. Each charge lasts about six hours. The sensor records 500 data points per second, detecting the lightest touch from a boot or hand and creating a clear digital spike. If broadcast cameras lose sight of a crowd of players, this data identifies who last touched the ball.

This data works closely with an improved Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system to address the kind of issues we saw in Qatar in 2022. Remember the controversial Japan versus Spain match? Japan scored a crucial goal from a ball that seemed to have rolled out of bounds. The decision remained, knocking Germany out and leaving fans frustrated at unclear TV replays.

Significant upgrades have also been made to Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT), which was introduced at the previous World Cup. It was designed to spot offsides almost in real time but it earlier alerted officials if a player was greater than 50cm offside. Now, it can signal if a player is more than 10cm offside. The technology is expected to handle the delayed offside flag.

The match official will remain in charge of when to raise the flag and stop play. The technology comes with some limitations, like whether a player is interfering with play or if there are several players too close together.

Every venue is equipped with 16 optical tracking cameras, an increase from 12 in Qatar, gathering around 150 million data points per game. During the pre-tournament photo shoot, all 1,248 players entered a quick camera setup to create personalised AI avatars.

These digital replicas produce lifelike, automated 3D offside animations for TV viewers within seconds. They also help solve the issue of visual obstruction for referees. Often, a player is technically offside, but officials spend time debating whether that player blocked the goalkeeper’s view. By rendering the stadium in 3D using real-time tracking data, the system creates a virtual “line-of-sight” feed. Replay officials and fans at home can see directly through the goalkeeper’s eyes to check if their vision was blocked.

Those AI avatars and millions of tracking data points are not just for the referee’s booth. The tournament’s tech partner, Lenovo, has developed a generative AI knowledge assistant called Football AI Pro to support all 48 participating teams. By analysing data points across tons of metrics — like pressing efficiency and team transitions — analysts can quickly generate comparative playing patterns through text, charts, or video clips, while players receive personalised post-match reports directly on their devices.

Technology extends to referees with the new “stabilised referee body camera”. Fans enjoy first-person referee footage, but a referee’s running usually makes that footage shaky and hard to watch. Lenovo tackled this by introducing real-time AI stabilisation, smoothing out heavy vibrations.

Technology is not just being used on the pitch, it is also being used to analyse crowd movements. When thousands of fans want food at the same time, Fifa has to keep the lines moving. That will be made possible with Lenovo’s Smart Wayfinding solution. Every stadium is scanned to create a “digital twin” of the entire venue, showing where crowds are building up and directing fans to the shortest queues and least congested areas.