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At the 2026 World Cup, the refs on the field and the officials on the sidelines will be able to use an abundance of tech to help call penalties, spot offside violations, and make other consequential decisions.
The video assistant referee system, known as VAR, and the semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) have been used in soccer for years. But the setup at this summer’s World Cup represents some of the most advanced uses of adjudication tech to date—not just in soccer, but across all high-level sports.
During each match, the pitch will be awash in sensors, cameras, and new computer vision software. One especially notable advancement this year is the use of digital twins. Every player in the World Cup has had their body scanned by a computer. The digital twin of any athlete—which precisely matches their height, limb length, and shoe size—can be dropped into a virtual simulation of the game to determine their exact position relative to the ball, boundary lines, and other players. Officials can use all of this data to help spot infractions, determine penalties, and smooth out the edges of the beautiful game.
Even though these systems can study the action more closely than is possible with the human eye, flesh-and-blood refs are still part of the game. But when the referees get it wrong—which they do, ask any fan—and their decisions are challenged, officials can to turn to the technology to correct any mistakes, replacing subjective calls with objective truths.
These systems are primarily used to catch big errors, like checking to see if a particular player was offside during a play that resulted in a game-deciding goal. But teams can often call for a review of even inconsequential plays. It raises the question of where the system’s value lies: in bringing an impartial eye to pivotal moments, or in allowing the league to adjudicate tiny infractions of an inch here or an inch there.
FIFA and other worldwide soccer agencies have made their position on the subject clear: They want the big errors gone, sure, but those inches also matter a lot.
The Eyes Have It
Elements of this year’s setup are similar to the 2022 World Cup, but with upgrades. Hawk-Eye remains the event’s optical tracking provider, with its computer vision system capturing over two dozen skeletal points on each player at all times. The tracking system uses 16 high-resolution cameras this time around compared to 12 in 2022, FIFA director of innovation Johannes Holzmüller says.
And like in 2022, that optical data will be combined with advanced sensors inside the ball itself. Kinexon, a leader in the sports wearables space, will again be providing the match ball’s digital brain. This time it will include an ultrawide-band and IMU sensor setup (including both an accelerometer and gyroscope, the latter of which is vital for capturing ball spin) that tracks the ball’s precise location and any distinct touches, recording those data points 500 times per second.
The 2022 version of the ball sensor sat suspended in the center of the ball’s interior, supported by a string-based sling made by Adidas, which also makes the ball itself. This time, though, Adidas has created a small bladder to hold the sensor that’s placed along the inside wall of the ball.
“It’s vulcanized inside the bladder with a little plastic pouch,” says Maximillian Schmidt, Kinexon’s cofounder and managing director. “That vulcanization is just way more stable than those strings, which had hooks that could break easier.”
Placing the sensor along the ball’s interior wall instead of the center, however, requires some counterbalancing so the added weight on one side of the ball doesn’t make it wobble. While Schmidt says the entire setup weighs just 13 grams, his team had to calibrate everything to ensure every touch or movement of the ball is tracked evenly. And because the sensor now sits right at a point where it could be kicked directly, more robust impact testing was a key part of the process.
