The Art of Celebration: Dance Takes Center Stage at 2026 World Cup

Rewatching Yoane Wissa's equalizer against Portugal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's opening match of this World Cup, the whole sequence looks like choreography. Not only the articulated curve of Congolese full-back Arthur Masuaku's inswinging cross, nor Wissa's box-step shimmy to peel away from the pack of Portuguese defenders as he leapt into the air to redirect the ball past the goalkeeper with his head. It was what happened next, the manifestation of a team united in its belief that tenacity need not come at the expense of style.

Wissa whizzed over to the bench as his teammates followed behind, arms outstretched like an artistic director cueing the music for a rehearsal — and surely, this was a familiar move. Once gathered, everybody, including some non-Congolese members of the coaching staff, reeled one arm back and lashed it past the other in a dance move known as fimbu.

Fimbu: More Than Just a Dance Move

Fimbu translates to 'the whip' in Lingala, one of DRC's four national languages, and this was as much of a display of national pride, and a callback to the country's soccer glory days, as it was a goal celebration. In 2015, Congolese singer and songwriter Félix Wazekwa released "Leopards Fimbu na Fimbu," and it became entwined with the team's victory at the 2016 African Nations Championship (CHAN).

The dance may not have gone viral at this World Cup by modern definition of the term but it is contagious, and Zlatan Ibrahimović appears to have caught it. The Sweden soccer icon and Fox Sports studio analyst did the dance on air Saturday night, inviting his compatriots Thierry Henry and Alexi Lalas to join him.

Brazil's Cultural Expression Under Scrutiny

Even Brazil, a country with the most Afro-descendent people outside the continent itself, a nation that has won the World Cup five times, is not immune to criticism of their cultural expressions. Forward Vinicius Junior, a dark-skinned Afro-Brazilian, has been made into a scapegoat for all the thinly veiled racism that masquerades as hand-wringing every time the Real Madrid superstar dares to embody other parts of his culture on the pitch with a samba step or TikTok dance.

Yet after scoring the third goal in a comfortable eventual 3-0 win for his team against Haiti just before halftime, the 25-year-old allowed himself a demure swivel of his hips before the crowd. By Brazil's third and final group-stage match against Scotland, Vinicius Jr. was back to steppin'.

Referencing the 2022 World Cup moment when Roy Keane criticized Brazil for dancing in their 4-1 win against South Korea, Golden Globe-winning Brazilian actor Wagner Moura recently rejected claims of gamesmanship. "No, this is cool, man," he said. "Dance… dance, dude."

African Teams Unite Through Dance

Ghana has spanned the traditional and the contemporary in its World Cup dancing, from organizing a call-and-response musical circle in the team hotel with the country's record goalscorer Asamoah Gyan, to spreading the viral Kakalika dance. An Afrobeats song by Ghanaian duo DopeNation goes by the same name and has become the Black Stars' 2026 World Cup jam.

With 10 African teams at this World Cup — more than have ever participated before, thanks to the expansion from a field of 32 to 48 — and with nine of them still standing, there is huge potential to shift the narrative of soccer on the continent and its diaspora. Dance and soccer is not a matter of either/or for these players. It has always been 'both/and'.

History tells us there will always be pushback, Eurocentric notions of propriety imposed upon the sport and the Black bodies that play it. But the dance will outlast it.