BTS: FIFA World Cup 2026

IBC

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Time-zone differences, travel demands, and the geographic spread of host cities have forced FIFA’s host broadcast and rights holders the BBC to rethink traditional production approaches.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup nears kick-off, FIFA’s Host Broadcast Production division is confronting what may be the most ambitious live sports production ever attempted. With 16 venues spread across the United States, Canada, and Mexico — and 104 matches across a 39-day tournament — the scale of the operation is forcing a fundamental rethink of traditional World Cup workflows. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has likened the endeavour to “104 Super Bowls” which six billion fans are expected to watch at home.

At the centre of that transformation is a highly centralised production model built around the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Dallas, which FIFA Host Broadcast Production Head Oscar Sanchez describes as the “17th venue” of the tournament.

“We’ve been working on this project for over two years,” Sanchez explained at NAB in April. “The FIFA World Cup 2026 is humongous. I genuinely haven’t found another adjective for it. This is the largest project we have ever tackled.”

Sanchez should know. He has produced over 10,000 football matches worldwide in a 25 year career which has seen him contributed to six FIFA World Cups as a broadcaster or as part of the host broadcast team and a decade at Concacaf’s overseeing the broadcast of tournaments such as the Copa América Centenario, for which he won a Sports Emmy.

“Obviously, cost matters,” he says. “Centralisation saves a lot of money in travel and logistics. The less we need to travel, the lower the operational risk. No flight delays, no weather disruptions, no logistical issues. But the bigger factor is consistency.”

Valuable insights were learned during the FIFA Club World Cup in the United States last summer especially around staffing, logistics, and evaluating new directors. Working in US venues with local crews gave FIFA and production partner Host Broadcast Services (HBS) a clearer understanding of available talent, including replay and camera operators.

This includes deploying 16 dedicated production teams, one for each venue across the three countries, rather than rotating a smaller number of crews around the tournament. They are supported by seven centralised replay operations teams working from Dallas.

Dallas works well because it’s one of the few locations from which you can reach virtually every World Cup venue within about three hours.

The IBC is the technical heart of the tournament and the operational backbone for replay, graphics, camera shading, VAR, data processing, and stadium entertainment workflows. More than 2,000 media partner personnel are expected onsite, alongside FIFA’s own production and technology teams.

At venue level, however, the production footprint remains substantial. Each stadium will support around 50 commentary positions alongside a complex routing infrastructure capable of serving approximately 50 media partners per match.

While the core world feed philosophy remains familiar - football is still primarily directed through the main Camera One - digital production demands have transformed the scale of content creation surrounding each game.

“We’re producing six feeds per match, plus isolated feeds and over 10,000 hours of additional content and shoulder programming,” Sanchez explains. “The greater challenge now is helping broadcasters efficiently locate and curate content quickly.”

 Crew composition and local integration

Historically, World Cups have used 6-8 core production teams, mostly European. FIFA intentionally broadened the talent pool to include directors and crews from South America, the US, Mexico, Australia, and beyond.

“We wanted to open more opportunities to people who live, breathe and enjoy football,” Sanchez explains. “Nobody can say that a country like Argentina, the world champion, doesn’t live and breathe football.”

The Club World Cup proved particularly valuable in evaluating how those newer directors handled the pressure of a FIFA event.

“Anybody can direct a football match,” Sanchez says. “But when you realise you are going to a FIFA World Cup with 50 cameras and an audience that could reach a billion people, we need to go beyond technical knowledge. We need to analyse who is mentally ready to take on this challenge.”

Directors are encouraged to bring their trusted core team members (vision mixers, replay producers, etc.) with different editorial teams bringing slightly different directing styles. For example, South American directors often focus heavily on coaches, while European directors prioritise players. French directors may favour more artistic ultra‑slow‑motion shots.

To maintain consistency FIFA and HBS will continue using extensive editorial guidelines and a quality-control (QC) operation. The QC team provides live feedback for directors and produces reports for every match and every multi‑feed (training, press conferences, etc.).

EVS’ AI-enabled XtraMotion will also be used to create super slow-motion content from any camera. The latest version includes a Cinematic effect that simulates a shallow depth of field and again can be applied to any standard footage. Two replay specialists are producing a guide for HBS’ EVS ops as to how to consistently apply the techniques. Operators can trigger the application of the chosen effect directly from the LSM-VIA remote controller, with a single click on a shortcut button.

The camera plan

All 104 matches will receive premium coverage with 45 cameras, including Pole cams, Cable cams, Ultra‑motion and super‑slow‑motion, Cine‑style cameras, RefCam, 360° cameras and aerial/drone coverage (subject to strict US/Canada/Mexico regulations)

FPV drones were tested previously but face regulatory and insurance challenges. Their use remains under evaluation.

For the Round of 32, additional ultra‑motion cameras and isolated player cams will be added.

The camera plan is not designed solely around broadcast but to create content for every platform and every audience. Indeed, the most downloaded shot from Qatar 2022 was a Lionel Messi celebration which was shot on an iPhone.

The RefCam (called Referee View), developed internally by FIFA’s Football Technology & Innovation team, was considered a major success at the Club World Cup. It is not part of the ISO feeds for rights‑holders but is included in the host broadcast and will be used sparingly to maintain impact. It features AI-enabled image stabilisation to reduce motion blur.

Signal workflow

A clean world feed is produced from every stadium, sent back to Dallas where graphics are added and for onward distribution.

All camera feeds travel via Verizon’s contribution network to the IBC where centralised replay and graphics are produced.

Feeds are distributed via IP (using SRT) and satellite. For the first time, remote partners can access the same router as those physically at the IBC.

Fifa’s official post‑production hub which will handle editing for the tournament is not in Dallas, or Texas or even in the United States. It’s in London principally to leverage the large UK pool of talent experienced at fast turnaround matchday edits. It’s also another way for HBS to reduce travel costs.

Centralised replay & graphics

Replay operators will be based at the IBC, rather than stadiums (with on‑site backups for redundancy). This allows FIFA to assemble the world’s best operators in one location, improving consistency and quality. These teams are organised into language clusters (English, Spanish, French/German).

Graphics operations are also centralised and produced by specialists from AE Live.

Commentary strategy

With 104 matches, English‑language broadcasters will be stretched, increasing reliance on host commentary. FIFA is fielding 32 commentators (16 play‑by‑play, 16 analysts), with a more global, less English-centric mix than in past tournaments.

Their commentary is now used across highlights, clips, social media, and digital content not just live broadcasts.

3D Avatars for VAR

Lenovo’s sponsorship of the event as Official Technology Partner has yielded a number of innovations. These include AI-enabled 3D player avatars for integration into match broadcasts during semi-automated offside technology replays.

The system was tested at last year’s FIFA Intercontinental Cup staged in Qatar.  Before the start of World Cup 2026, each player’s body was scanned in process that took just 1 second. The scans form the basis of the avatars which are unique in appearance, dimensions and proportions which Lenovo says will provide a further data source for player tracking and VAR officiating.
Previously, VAR replays were generated solely using player tracking data. FIFA can use avatars to show a “visually matching” image of the player.

“The output will depict the player more accurately for fans watching in the stadium and around the globe,” Lenovo said.

The Chinese tech provider has also helped deliver an AI-powered data analytics tool. Football AI Pro is available to all coaches, players and analysts of all 48 teams at the World Cup and has been trained on “hundreds of millions” of FIFA-owned and -organised football data points to generate insights in text, video, graphs and 3D visualisations.

It is being pitched as a means to level the analytics playing field since it is available to newbie national sides Curaçao and Cabo Verde as well as the European and South American elite.

BBC opts for home advantage

The FIFA World Cup offers rights holders a chance to rethink how major tournaments are presented in an era shaped by sustainability, cost pressures, and increasingly sophisticated XR technologies.

The BBC is moving away from traditional green-screen presentation toward a fully LED-based virtual production environment at Dock10 in MediaCity. The project reflects wider industry trends toward hybrid production models.

While the BBC will still deploy teams on location, particularly for the latter stages of the tournament, much of the presentation output will originate from Salford.

“We’re still doing hybrid coverage,” explains BBC Sport design director John Murphy, “but the scale of the tournament and the realities of travel and sustainability mean this approach makes much more sense operationally.”

The broadcaster’s move builds on lessons learned during Euro 2024 coverage from Berlin, where the BBC successfully combined XR graphics with real-world scenery, including the iconic Brandenburg Gate backdrop. However, Murphy admitted that replicating that sense of realism inside a fully virtual studio presents a very different challenge.

“In Berlin, we had the advantage of a real location and were layering XR elements into it,” he explained. “This time we’re starting with a blank canvas, so the question becomes ‘how do you create something that still feels authentic?’”

The answer lies in a hybrid visual approach that combines LED volume technology, physical scenic elements, real-world imagery, AI-assisted processing, and Unreal Engine-style environments. Rather than attempting to recreate photorealistic cityscapes entirely through live-action video, the BBC is developing stylised virtual environments inspired by the architecture and atmosphere of World Cup host cities.

Murphy describes the goal as building “a space and a feeling” that reflects the cultural identity of the tournament’s host nations.

The production setup itself will feature four cameras, a jib, Mo-Sys camera tracking, LED walls, LED flooring, and HDR workflows throughout. The transition to HDR has proven particularly complex, with the BBC leaning on external expertise and technologies already proven in the American sports market.

Dock10 and Pixotope are central to the technical workflow, with the BBC also working alongside graphics provider AE Live and other specialist vendors. Perhaps the biggest lesson has been understanding just how many operational layers full LED virtual production introduces compared with traditional green-screen workflows.

“We probably went into it a little naively,” Murphy admits. “You quickly realise this is not just an extension of green-screen production. There are many more partnerships, technologies, and dependencies involved.”

Testing has reshaped key creative decisions. Early plans to use actual camera footage as virtual backgrounds proved problematic because of the precision required for parallax and perspective accuracy. The production pivoted toward more dynamic game-engine-generated environments built from processed still imagery and AI-enhanced assets.

 Importantly, the project is not being viewed internally as a one-off World Cup investment. The LED infrastructure is expected to be integrated into future football production workflows, creating a longer-term legacy for Match of the Day and other studio-based sports programming.

 

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