Colombian popular music has come together to create a new anthem for the Selección Colombia’s road to the 2026 World Cup. More than a dozen leading singers record “Te quiero ver campeón” with the aim of turning the country’s football passion into a single shared chorus for the tournament in Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
The collaboration brings together some of the biggest names in the popular genre, since Jessi Uribe, Paola Jara, Arelys Henao, Pipe Bueno, Jhonny Rivera, Ciro Quiñónez, Alzate, Luis Alfonso, Francy, Luisito Muñoz, and Jhon Alex Castaño all lend their voices to the track. The idea, according to the artists’ teams, is that the national team “feels the support of an entire country that sings from the stands, the living rooms, and the neighborhood stores”, so that the song works in stadiums as well as on television and social networks.
The song’s origin adds an emotional layer, because “Te quiero ver campeón” began to take shape when Yeison Jiménez was still alive, and after his death the artists decided to move ahead as a tribute to one of the most beloved voices in the genre.
The video, recorded in Medellin’s Manrique neighborhood, uses images of family gatherings, improvised street parties, children playing with yellow jerseys, and flags hanging from windows to show how Colombians actually live football, rather than focusing only on stadiums or celebrities. These scenes reveal how local practices sustain emotional energy and identity when the national team plays far from home; by grounding the visuals in everyday life, the collaboration seeks to make the football soundtrack feel owned by the people, not only by the artists.
Colombia extends its World Cup music footprint
This new popular‑music hymn arrives in a broader context where Colombia already occupies a central place in World Cup soundtracks, since Carlos Vives will lead “Somos Más”, an official song for the 2026 tournament as part of Telemundo’s coverage, alongside Argentine singer Emilia, Puerto Rican artist Wisin, and Mexican singer Xavi. That project mixes vallenato roots with urban and pop influences, and it will be performed at events such as the Billboard Latin Music Week panel “La Música del Mundial”, reinforcing the idea that Colombian artists help set the tone for global football parties.
Meanwhile, the country also contributes from other genres, because Silvestre Dangond has recorded a separate track that features forward Luis Díaz, one of the national team’s stars, blending vallenato with modern production and placing a current player at the center of the storyline. In parallel, compilations of classic Colombia World Cup anthems continue to circulate on digital platforms, reminding fans of Shakira’s “Waka Waka” and “La La La” or Sebastián Yatra’s “Love” with Gianluca Vacchi, which helped define earlier tournaments. That football soundtrack, therefore, is not a single song but a layered catalog.
Football soundtrack as identity and projection
For Colombian artists, these songs are more than promotional tracks, since they function as tools to project national identity abroad and to rally a diverse society around one shared symbol when the ball starts to roll. Musicians often highlight that football and music reach places where political messages or institutional campaigns do not, creating links between regions like the Caribbean, the Coffee Axis, and the plains through a common chorus.
Fans, for their part, tend to adopt some hymns and ignore others, which is why artists and producers pay close attention to how quickly lines and hooks appear in stadium chants, schoolyards, or bar celebrations. In past World Cups, fragments of Shakira’s and other Colombian songs ended up as terrace songs in cities far from Bogotá or Barranquilla, showing how the football soundtrack can travel independently of official marketing plans.
Colombia’s new popular‑music anthem “Te quiero ver campeón” confirms that the country will not only play the 2026 World Cup on the field, but also on the speakers, since dozens of singers, producers, and fans now compete and cooperate to define what the national team sounds like in North America.