FIFA attended CES 2026 in Las Vegas alongside Lenovo, with both companies introducing a series of AI-powered technologies in place for World Cup 2026, that will mainly help teams, managers and referees, and in the future fans.
The first announcement is Football AI Pro, a generative AI knowledge assistant that all 48 teams participating in the competition will be allowed to use (and in the future fans as well, although it's not clear how). This system will analyse millions of football data and will show it in text, video, graphs and 3D visualisations, and teams and managers will be allowed to use before and after, but not during the matches.
<social>https://x.com/fifamedia/status/2008857584028062098</social>
FIFA remarks that this will allow all team to access a sophisticated analysis system regardless of their financial and technical resources, "democratising access to data by providing the most complete set of football analytics to all competing teams and soon to fans as well".
Referees will also benefit from the innovations by Lenovo with improvements in semi-automated offside technologies. Using AI, the computers will create 3D player avatars scanned to create a 3D model, that helps the system track players reliably during fast or obstructed movements. Those 3D images will also be shown in the video assistant referee (VAR) and presumably in TV broadcasts, so that fans can have a clearer understanding of refereeing decisions.
Finally, the Referee View, a body camera that the referees wear, already used as a trial in last year's Club World Cup, will be improved with AI stabilisation software, reducing motion blur, to deliver "higher quality, first-person perspective for global audiences, enhancing transparency, understanding and engagement throughout the match."