As of halftime, the World Cup final Sunday was still anybody’s game, with Argentina and Spain tied 0-0. But there’s been one winner already – if for nothing but sheer logistics: FIFA managed to pull off its first-ever World Cup final halftime show, featuring a parade of many of the biggest names in music, from Madonna to Coldplay.

RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook of BTS perform during the Topps Final Halftime Show in the FIFA World Cup 2026 Final match between Spain and Argentina at New York New Jersey Stadium on July 19, 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

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The organizers summoned big names from six continents, and oh boy, did they show up to represent.

• From North America: Justin Bieber and Madonna (whose new album just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200).
• From Asia: the world’s most famous K-pop group, BTS.
• From South America: Shakira (the undisputed World Cup queen) and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who led hemisphere-spanning musicians from his two orchestras, the New York Philharmonic (where he will start as artistic and music director this September) and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.
• From Africa: Burna Boy, the Afrobeats superstar who duetted with Shakira on this year’s official World Cup song.
• From Europe, even in this post-Brexit era: Coldplay, fronted by Chris Martin.
• From Australia, the Iraq-born singer Emmanuel Kelly.

Plus the eternally lovable Muppets including Kermit and Miss Piggy, the viral dance troupe Ghetto Kids from Kampala, Uganda, who danced with Shakira, and children from Staten Island’s PS22 Chorus, who closed out the show singing with Martin.

Shakira performs during the Topps Final Halftime Show at New York New Jersey Stadium on July 19, 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

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The lineup, announced this past week, signaled a feel-good, family-friendly procession of fan favorites, and that’s exactly what the performers delivered. There wasn’t much of a throughline in the 11-minute spectacle, save for some broadly inspiring strokes: Togetherness! Unity! Love! Madonna opened the show, reminding the audience in her roller rink setup that “music makes the people come together!” She was riding in a dune buggy manned by two of football’s past kings from Brazil, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. What was a dune buggy doing in a roller rink? Best not to ask too many probing questions.

Ronaldinho, Madonna and Ronaldo perform during the Topps Final Halftime Show at New York New Jersey Stadium on July 19, 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

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From there, the show unspooled into a series of celebrity cameos and brief reminders of memes from this year’s Cup, from the orchestral musicians mimicking the widely beloved Norwegian row to the Congolese superfan Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, who performs at games as a living statue commemorating his country’s slain independence leader Patrice Lumumba. The show also managed to tap into some non-World Cup soccer heartwarmers too: Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) and Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) were on hand to introduce Bieber — with a “Beliebe” sign, no less – and Dudamel and his musicians played the now-eternal stadium anthem, the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” along with the Muppets Animal, Janice and Floyd Pepper.

Animal performs during the Topps Final Halftime Show at New York New Jersey Stadium on July 19, 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

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The show was a vehicle for FIFA’s charity arm, the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, whose goal is to raise $100 million to expand education and soccer access for children worldwide. As kids from Staten Island’s PS22 Chorus sang alongside Chris Martin in a riot of rainbow colors emblazoned with the word “LOVE,” FIFA invited viewers to visit the fund’s website, which exhorts folks to “use the power of love to defeat poverty and and defend the planet” – a rather apolitical, if not completely anodyne, goal in more normal times. But at a game attended by Melania Trump and President Trump – a leader whose sentiments about rainbows, global unity and good sportsmanship are not always similarly aligned – such visuals and messaging hit quite differently.

A view of New York New Jersey Stadium on July 19, 2026 in East Rutherford, New Jersey during the Topps Final Halftime Show.

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Inside the U.S. Capitol, statues memorialize distinguished Americans, including famed social commentator and actor Will Rogers, who once quipped about Congress, “Every time they make a joke, it’s a law, and every time they make a law, it’s a joke.”

Humor like that still rings true to the nearly 9 in 10 Americans who say they’re unhappy with Congress.

“It’s a great American pastime to hate Congress,” said Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. “But I do think there’s a lot of frustration with Congress.”

Hulse has covered Capitol Hill since the Reagan administration. Asked if he sees a broken institution today, he replied, “Oh yes, totally. I unfortunately have said to people, ‘I’ve spent my career covering the decline of Congress.’ And yeah, they need to get it together. But there’s just very, very little cooperation between the parties, and you can’t make things happen that way.

“I do think a lot of them want to do the right thing, and they just can’t quite get themselves there to do it,” he added.

The fact is, under the Constitution, Congress really does have power. “Article I is a real thing,” said Hulse. “I think what’s happened with the Republicans in this Congress, and ceding power to the administration, has been a real mistake on a lot of fronts – tariffs, war powers, the things that are actually enumerated in the Constitution. They’re giving away the store. And once you give away some power, you never get it back.

“The Republicans might be looking at this and going, ‘Well, you know, this is President Trump, our guy. We needed to do that.’ Trust me: the next Democratic president isn’t going to turn around and say, ‘You know, that was a big mistake letting Congress get so weak. We need to empower them again.’ No, it’s not gonna happen. It goes for good.”

Pointing fingers

These days, Republicans control the Senate and the House, and legislation often faces gridlock. So far, the 119th Congress has passed fewer bills than many of its predecessors.

Some bills, though, have had real impact. There was the GOP mega-bill that will cut taxes by $4.5 trillion over the next decade, and a recently-passed bipartisan housing bill.

This Congress also will be remembered for the partial government shutdown over funds for homeland security. 

Still, critics left and right want more to be done, be it raising, or cutting, federal spending. And whatever its problems, Congress has been routinely bypassed altogether by President Trump, whether on trade or the war with Iran. He also pressures them to do his bidding, like urging an overhaul of federal voting rules this past week.

This is an especially uncertain time in the Senate. Former majority leader Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized for weeks, and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham died suddenly this month.

For Hulse, these disruptions underscore how Congress is grappling with age, and an increasingly grim political climate – worse, he says, than when he first came to Capitol Hill four decades ago: “1985, Congress was different,” he said. “Lot of World War II vets who had already experienced a lot of life. So, this was not, you know, a big, difficult thing for them. They were trying to do the right thing.

“And now it’s both parties, much more aligned with the President. Hard to get things done. Margins are tight. The districts are really gerrymandered. There’s a lot wrong with Congress.”

Who is to blame? Both parties point the finger at the other for the mess. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said, “Well, the Republicans don’t control the House; the place is chaos.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said, “Unfortunately, Democrats have chosen to play politics and put that over people time and time again under this administration.” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told us, “You’ve got the biggest voice in the room, Trump, fighting against his own Congress.”

“People should be mad”

Sarah Binder, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says that the legislative branch is “struggling,” while Philip Wallach, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, describes Congress as “marginalized” – the result, in part, of an empowered president.

Asked whether she believes Congress is broken or diminished, Binder replied, “Well, both, for sure. Certainly diminished in the sense that it has enormous authority under the Constitution: Power of the purse, power to declare war. And yet, oftentimes, not just under Trump, this current president, but reaching back decades, Congress cedes that authority to the president. All the authority on the table, but struggling to try to use it, or even to try to get it back.

“So, the muscle memory for how to make deals, how to legislate, how to solve problems? The muscles, they’re there, but they’ve really atrophied,” Binder said.

“For me, what’s changed is how the members themselves see their jobs,” said Wallach. “I think what we’ve lost is the sense that, I’m sent here to solve the problems of the American people. I have to find a way to do that. That means building coalitions. That means compromise. Compromise has too much become a dirty word in American politics today. There’s a sense that if you’re willing to compromise, you’re not really holding true to your values.

“Today, people see their job as supporting the White House when it’s their ally there – or fighting against them in various ways when it’s the other party that has the presidency. And since Congress has for decades ceded so much authority to the executive branch, there’s a sense among the members on Capitol Hill, that’s where the real action is – in the executive branch, [and] in the judiciary.”

In his current term, President Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders — over 260 so far. The two presidents before him issued many of their own, leaving many Americans to wonder, What is Congress doing?

Is the public being too hard on Congress? “I think the truth is, Congress doesn’t need to be a very popular organization, even if it’s working well,” said Wallach. “The old line about lawmaking and sausage-making is there for a reason. There’s something unseemly about the way legislative politics has to operate that makes it hard to be really popular as a Congress.”

“I think the public should be hard on Congress,” Binder said. “There’s $30 trillion in public debt; Social Security seemingly on the brink if they don’t act soon – the whole host of issues and problems that we see around us. The cost of housing? People should be mad.

“At the same time, the public often does have quite unreasonable expectations of what’s possible. You need big, broad bipartisan majorities to get stuff done,” she said. “And in a polarized America, with factions in each party, that’s really hard.”

For Binder and Wallach, today’s Congress might be troubled, but it is, as ever, a reflection of its times – and of the people it represents.

Looking ahead, are they hopeful about Congress?

“I am an eternal optimist, but I’m not that hopeful about Congress,” said Binder. “I think the problems and the roots of the problems we’ve been talking about, they’re going to be with us for a long time. And whenever Congress has difficulties trying to tackle problems, they kick ’em to the future. And that just means the challenges are going to get harder.”

“I will say, taking the very long view about Congress makes me a little bit more hopeful,” Wallach said. “Congress has looked a lot of different ways over our two centuries. Members have found ways to reform the institution to make it act completely differently. And so, I think at some point, we’re gonna turn a corner. Congress has the power to regenerate itself, to put itself back at the center of the action. And I expect someday it may do that.”

     
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Story produced by Robbyn McFadden and Reid Orvedahl. Editor: Jason Schmidt. 

NEW YORK — The final day of a summer of FIFA World Cup fever in North America, and the last of 104 matches, has finally arrived, as the world’s top two ranked national teams — Spain and Argentina — will kick off at 3 p.m. Eastern time for the right to lift the sport’s most coveted trophy.

A crowd of 80,000 people is expected to pack into the stands of MetLife Stadium in New Jersey just outside of New York City, where the cheapest tickets were going for nearly $10,000 on secondary market sites.

For days, wildfire smoke had swept over New York. Then a downpour on Saturday and a flash flood alert. But by Sunday morning, with a sunny forecast calling for clear skies and a high of 80 degrees at kickoff, all of that was in the rearview mirror.

For Spain, a win would mark a meteoric rise for a young and thrilling squad and their 19-year-old phenom Lamine Yamal, who despite an injury to his quad earlier this spring, has flashed greatness throughout the tournament.

Spain has beaten three of the world’s top-ten teams to reach the final — first a 1-0 win over No. 5 Portugal, then a 2-1 quarterfinal win over No. 9 Belgium, and most impressive, a 2-0 win in the semifinal over No. 3 France, whose attack had looked unstoppable until then. Spain has conceded only one goal in their seven World Cup games so far.

Meanwhile, for Argentina, a win would cap a historic and dominant era that has included the 2022 World Cup title, two Copa América trophies and the 2022 Finalissima — all while the team has been led by the global megastar Lionel Messi. “They are an excellent opponent, an excellent national team that has had a spectacular run over the last eight or 10 years since this group came together,” said Spain’s coach Luis de la Fuente on Friday.

Argentina’s road to New York has been paved with improbable wins, one after another. In none of their four knockout games did Argentina hold the lead when the clock reached 90 minutes. Twice they have escaped with a stoppage time game-winner; twice they have escaped after going ahead in extra time.

Lionel Messi of Argentina speaks on stage at a fan event in New York City on Friday before Sunday’s FIFA World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina.

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At 39 years old, Messi’s performance in this World Cup has been nothing short of unbelievable: His eight goals and four assists — including assists on both crucial late-game goals in the heart-stopping semifinal against England — put him in second place behind only France’s Kylian Mbappé. He scored twice in Saturday’s bronze medal loss to England and now has ten goals.