Mexican regional star Carín León and American singer-songwriter Jelly Roll have united on the first official song for the 2026 World Cup, from an album that Billboard is calling one of the tournament’s “biggest collaborations yet.”
The song, “Lighter,” was produced by Canadian hitmaker Cirkut and will be released on Friday. A 15-second snippet can be heard here.
The song “brings together three host countries through one collaborative sound, bridging borders and genres while reflecting the shared cultural energy of North America and the global passion of the game,” FIFA said in a statement.
The song includes vocals by León (who hails from Hermosillo, Sonora) and Jelly Roll (born in Nashville) and was produced by Cirkut (born as Henry Walter in Ottawa, Canada).
News of the music project was teased by a guitar-toting FIFA President Gianni Infantino in a promotional video he posted this week on Instagram.
The album “will create magic as football and music are coming together to unite the world,” Infantino wrote in the caption.
The album’s first single, “Lighter,” is “groundbreaking and sets the tone for everything to come,” he said of the forthcoming album, which FIFA is simply calling the “Official FIFA World Cup 2026 Album.”
Though no other songs or artists have been revealed, the album will include “established stars and new voices representing different styles and different cultures from around the world,” FIFA noted.
The 2026 World Cup will kick off June 11 in Mexico City with a Mexico–South Africa match and conclude July 19 in New Jersey. Matches will span 11 U.S. cities, three in Mexico and two in Canada.
León, whose 16-piece band’s “Tiny Desk” concert (in Spanish with English captions) last year has over 11 million views on YouTube, will celebrate the release with a free concert on March 21 in Tijuana’s Plaza Monumental parking lot.
Officials are expecting more than 80,000 fans at the event, which is part of Circuito Nacional de Festivales (National Circuit of Festivals for Peace) — a series of more than 200 free concerts and festivals around Mexico, with Tijuana as the kickoff.
León, 36, has quickly become one of the biggest musical stars in Mexico and a key face of regional Mexican music’s global boom. In 2024, he won a Latin Grammy for best contemporary Mexican music album with “Boca Chueca, Vol. 1,” and in 2026, took home a second Grammy for “Palabra De To’s (Seca).” He racks up tens of millions of streams and regularly sells out arenas on both sides of the border.
Jelly Roll, 41, meanwhile, has parlayed his past as an underground Southern rapper and a convict into one of country music’s most unlikely mainstream ascents, scoring a top three Billboard album with “Whitsitt Chapel.”
With reports from ESPN Deportes, Billboard and Zeta Tijuana
