When the FIFA World Cup 2026 arrives in the United States this June, it will signal more than soccer’s return to its fastest-growing commercial market. The tournament will span three countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—for the first time, becoming the largest World Cup ever staged. The scale, however, is also forcing a technological reset.
As modern global sporting events grow in scale, expectations have evolved alongside them. Audiences now look for more immersive broadcasts and real-time data, broadcasters face rising reliability demands, and governing bodies continue to push for greater transparency and precision. Together, these pressures are starting to expose the limits of traditional IT systems in elite sports such as soccer, particularly around latency, and paving the way for AI-driven, real-time intelligence embedded directly into competition, operations, and fan engagement.
As the official technology partner of the World Cup 2026, Lenovo is treating the tournament as a systems-level deployment, placing AI at the operational core of the world’s largest sporting event. The company is treating the event not as a showcase, but as a real-world test of AI beyond cloud-first architectures, where failure carries immediate consequences. Rather, it’s betting that global scale, matched with deep local execution, delivers an advantage in such a complex environment.
Lenovo chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang says the World Cup exemplifies how AI can operate in complex, large-scale environments. “These are live events with real pressure and real audiences,” he says. “The value of such partnerships goes beyond short-term visibility. They help us understand how AI performs under demanding conditions, and that insight feeds directly into how we design and improve our technology.”
Yang also notes that, while Lenovo uses global sports partnerships to highlight its broader AI strategy, its technology is playing a major role in improving the sport itself. “This year, you will see referees using AI support, players benefiting from AI insights, and organizers using AI to improve operations,” he says. The company asserts that this year’s World Cup will be the “most AI-driven global sporting event” in history.
An AI-Driven Sporting Event
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas last week, Lenovo detailed how it will supply the digital backbone of the World Cup 2026—from core infrastructure to advanced AI systems that will shape all 104 matches.
Alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the company unveiled a broad suite of AI-driven technologies for the tournament, including Football AI Pro; AI-enabled 3D player avatars integrated into semi-automated offside technology; an Intelligent Command Center using real-time AI summaries to manage tournament operations across three countries; AI-stabilized Referee View body-camera footage for broadcasts; smart wayfinding and venue digital twins; and resilient infrastructure supporting video review of refereeing decisions and broadcast systems.
Lenovo CTO Tolga Kurtoglu said that Lenovo had already deployed early versions of several upcoming technologies at the FIFA Club World Cup, using the tournament as a proving ground ahead of the much larger event this summer. “That allowed us to learn, iterate, and improve before deploying at World Cup scale,” he says.
Football AI Pro, codeveloped with FIFA, is an enterprise-grade AI knowledge system built with Lenovo’s AI Factory. The platform orchestrates multiple AI agents to analyze millions of data points and more than 2,000 football-specific metrics in real time, turning raw match data into actionable intelligence when decisions matter most. Analysts can spot patterns instantly through synchronized video, data overlays, and 3D visualizations. Coaches can simulate tactical changes in real time against specific opponents, and players will receive personalized match analysis.
“The idea is to deliver value across the entire football ecosystem, not just one group,” Kurtoglu explained. “If you look at other industries, like aircraft engines, analytics completely changed the business model—from selling engines to selling engine hours. The same principle applies here. With enough data and processing, you can help fundamentally change how decisions are made on the pitch.”
Elevating Human Judgment
One of the most visible changes fans will notice in this year’s World Cup is AI-enabled digital player avatars in broadcasts and officiating tools. Using computer vision and generative AI, Lenovo and FIFA are producing precise 3D representations of players, modeled on their actual physical dimensions. These avatars will appear in semi-automated offside replays, offering clearer, more contextual visuals for fans in stadiums and at home.
According to Johannes Holzmüller, director of innovation at FIFA, the goal of the partnership is not to automate decision-making but to elevate it. AI, he said, must support human judgment while making its reasoning visible and accountable—especially in a sport where trust is everything.
“At the Club World Cup last year in the U.S., we tested a system we call advanced semi-automated offside. The key idea is that the moment the system has a high confidence that all the data is correct, that information is immediately sent to the assistant referee,” he says. “With this advanced semi-automated offside system, we are setting a new benchmark. [It] will shape expectations for accuracy and fairness in tournaments to come.”
Referee View is also returning—this time enhanced. Body-worn referee cameras, stabilized using AI, will provide broadcast-ready footage from the official’s point of view. FIFA expects the feature to give billions of fans unprecedented perspectives on the game’s most critical moments.
Holzmüller explained that creating precise player avatars before the start of the tournament gives the system additional context, allowing it to determine offside situations with much higher confidence. When the system reaches that level of certainty, it can send direct guidance to assistant referees, reducing the need to delay decisions. Under current rules, delayed flags often mean play continues longer than necessary, increasing the risk of collisions and injuries before the ball goes out of play. By improving both confidence and speed, the technology helps avoid those situations and reduces unnecessary risk on the pitch.
AI Could Reshape Sport Strategies
“Lenovo helped us create an end-to-end process, starting from scanning the players—which takes only one second—through to having a digital asset platform where this information can be used across different use cases,” says Holzmüller. “Our thought behind integrating new technologies is to make the game fairer, clearer, and safer for everyone involved.”
Kurtoglu believes that deeper integration of AI and data could reshape how teams approach tactics, decision-making, and tournament planning ahead of the World Cup. “Strategies could change. It comes down to how you translate data into insights. The more data you have, the more analytics and AI you can apply, and eventually that will change tactics, analysis and even commentary,” he says. “That is why this is such an exciting moment for sports and technology.”
If Lenovo’s bet holds, the world’s biggest sporting events will raise the bar for how AI and analytics operate far beyond the stadium.
