All 1,248 players participating in the 2026 World Cup will have their bodies scanned by FIFA to create 3D avatars integrated with artificial intelligence (AI), serving semi-automatic offside technology (SAOT).
According to FIFA President Gianni Infantino's announcement at the Consumer Electronics Fair CES in Las Vegas on January 7, each player participating in the 2026 World Cup will own an AI avatar accurately reflecting the actual size and physique. These models will be used directly in the VAR process to analyze and make offside decisions.
Infantino described the 2026 World Cup as "the greatest performance ever on the planet". He emphasized that AI avatars will help increase accuracy in controversial offside situations.
3D avatars integrated with AI will help identify and track players accurately. This is a major step forward in semi-automatic offside technology, bringing clearer images, faster decisions and making it easier for people to understand" - Infantino said.
Semi-automatic offside technology is currently considered an upgraded version of the VAR support process, automating many key stages in offside determination.
In the Premier League, SAOT uses about 30 cameras to determine the position of the ball and track up to 10,000 data points on the player's body. However, current graphic models still do not accurately reflect the actual size of each person.
FIFA believes that adding personalized avatars will help increase accuracy and decision-making speed, especially in situations where players move fast or are obscured. The new system is expected to be more reliable for monitoring in complex ball phases.
Applying the individual size of each player also means that offside decisions will be "personalized" at an unprecedented level. This raises an interesting question for fans: is a player 1m95 tall like Erling Haaland more likely to fall into offside than Lionel Messi (1m70)?
According to FIFA, all players will be scanned before the tournament to create 3D models. Each scan takes only about a second, but can record the size of body parts with very high accuracy. These models will be used by VAR when calculating offside by SAOT, and also integrated into television to make decisions more realistically and attractively displayed to the audience on the field and global viewers.
Also at the event, FIFA announced the expansion of cooperation with technology partner Lenovo, including the launch of a new data platform called Football AI Pro. This platform will be provided to all teams participating in the World Cup, in order to contribute to narrowing the gap between rich and poor football backgrounds in the context of increasingly data-dependent football.
World Cup 2026 will be the greatest event on the planet. 7 million people will come to the stadium to watch 104 matches - equivalent to 104 Super Bowl matches. Tens of millions of people will flock to North America, 6 billion people will watch through screens, and the whole world will stop" - Infantino affirmed.
It's a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit.
