When the FIFA World Cup 2026 kicks off on June 11, all eyes will be on football superstars such as Argentine captain Lionel Messi, England midfielder Jude Bellingham, Brazilian forward Vinícius Júnior and others as they seek to lead their nations to football’s biggest prize.
What they will not see is the vast technology infrastructure operating behind the scenes.
For the first time, the World Cup will be powered by a single end-to-end technology platform spanning AI infrastructure, officiating systems, command centres, digital twins and fan engagement tools.
With 48 teams, 104 matches across 16 cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States, a whopping 250,000 volunteers and an expected global audience of six billion viewers, the tournament is becoming not only one of the largest sports events but one of the world’s largest live demonstrations of AI at scale.
At the centre of this effort is Lenovo, FIFA’s official technology partner, which is providing the infrastructure that powers everything from referee decisions to stadium operations and fan navigation. FIFA is the world’s governing body for football.
Asia Sheikh, global chief technology officer of Lenovo’s sports technology and innovation division, singled out smooth operations, real-time availability of intelligence and good fan experience as the three key pillars for the sports and entertainment industry.
FIFA wants the best technology “to run the best event possible without any error, with less manual work, less IT problems tickets and an entertaining experience for fans”, she said at a recent media briefing.
On top of the hardware and networking infrastructure, Lenovo and FIFA will harness the data of past football matches including players’ profiles and match scores and analyses to power the intelligence needed for the key applications, she added.
The digital nerve centre
Perhaps the most significant technology deployment is the Intelligent Command Centre, which is the tournament’s digital nervous system.
In previous tournaments, operational teams worked largely in silos. Venue operators, broadcasters, security teams and logistics personnel managed incidents independently. At World Cup 2026, this coordination is centralised.
The command centre continuously monitors data from venues, weather systems, transport networks and operational systems. If a thunderstorm threatens a match in Miami, for example, AI systems can automatically trigger workflows to notify broadcasters, venue managers, security teams and tournament officials simultaneously.
Rather than relying on dozens of people making phone calls and sending messages, AI agents coordinate responses in real time.
A separate Technology Command Centre oversees the health of the tournament’s IT infrastructure, monitoring servers, displays, IPTV systems, networking equipment and other technology assets spread across the three host nations.
The result is a centralised operations model more commonly associated with airports, military command centres and smart cities than sporting events.
New generation of refereeing technology
Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology remains one of football’s most controversial innovations. The challenge, according to Lenovo and FIFA, is not necessarily accuracy. It is trust.
Currently, offside decisions are often displayed using grey, generic digital figures that bear little resemblance to the actual players involved. For many fans, the decision can feel abstract and disconnected from reality.
To address this, FIFA has introduced photorealistic 3D digital avatars of players, said Valerio Rizzo, Lenovo’s AI senior manager and solution architect.
process. PHOTO: Lenovo
Using body-scanning technologies, AI reconstruction models and advanced graphics processing, players are transformed into realistic digital twins. These avatars can then be inserted into VAR visualisations, allowing viewers to see an offside decision using lifelike representations rather than generic stick figures.
The challenge for this application is enormous. More than 1,200 players across 48 national teams had to be scanned, processed and converted into broadcast-ready digital assets.
Each avatar undergoes automated reconstruction, texture mapping, quality validation and optimisation before being integrated into the officiating system, Rizzo explained.
The goal is not to change the referee’s decision-making process, he stressed, but to make those decisions easier for players, coaches and fans to understand and trust.
AI for coaches, not just referees
Another major innovation is FIFA AI Pro, an AI-powered football intelligence platform designed to democratise access to elite-level analytics.
Historically, the world’s richest football federations could hire teams of analysts and data scientists to study matches and player performance before planning match strategies. Smaller football nations often lacked those resources.
FIFA AI Pro aims to level the playing field, said Bhaskar Choudhuri, Lenovo’s chief marketing officer for Asia-Pacific.
Built on Lenovo’s hybrid AI infrastructure, the system analyses millions of data points generated from player tracking systems, ball tracking technologies and historical match data.
Coaches and analysts can ask questions in English and receive immediate insights. Instead of employing large teams of specialists, coaches can query the system directly about formations, player movements, defensive weaknesses or tactical patterns.
The platform can even generate three-dimensional visualisations of player movements and retrieve relevant video clips automatically.
For FIFA, the objective is not merely better analytics. It is making sophisticated football intelligence accessible to every federation, not just the traditional powerhouses.
Post-World Cup, teams from developing nations will have access to this technology which was once available to the richer clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United.
Guiding fans through entire cities
The fan experience is also becoming increasingly data driven. The aim is to ensure that fans can personalise their digital World Cup experiences, said Sheikh, rather than simply attending a football match.
World Cup fans arriving in host cities will have access to AI-powered navigation tools that extend beyond stadium walls via mobile devices and even desktop PCs.
The Smart Wayfinding platform acts as a digital guide, directing fans to stadium entrances, merchandise stores, restaurants, transport hubs and event activities in the cities. Inside large stadiums, it can even guide spectators to restrooms, food and drink outlets and seating sections.
The platform also has safety applications. During emergencies, organisers can use it to provide evacuation routes and real-time alerts directly to fans’ mobile devices.
Beyond football, World Cup 2026 is emerging as something larger: a proving ground for Lenovo’s AI infrastructure. Said Choudhuri: “If we can harness AI for FIFA, we can do it for almost any organisations.”
The tournament combines many of the technologies now reshaping enterprises, governments and cities. These include AI agents, digital twins, computer vision, edge computing, real-time analytics and command-and-control systems.
Lenovo is undertaking a huge challenge. Few environments require technology to operate simultaneously across three countries, dozens of venues, thousands of staff and billions of viewers.
It has been more than a year since Lenovo inked the project with FIFA in October 2024. In less than 10 days, Lenovo’s engineers, developers and operations teams will discover whether the digital infrastructure they have built for the FIFA World Cup can withstand the pressure of the world’s most-watched sporting event.
Naturally, Lenovo is taking the opportunity to make available a collection of exclusive limited-edition laptops and tablets for this sports event. The collection includes high-performance gaming laptops, premium business laptops and AI-powered laptop.
The World Cup may still be decided by what happens on the pitch. But increasingly, it will also showcase what happens in the data centres, command centres and AI systems running behind it.
