Review: World Cup's favorite artist draws huge crowd for Bay Area show
It’s World Cup time — and you know what that means, right?
It’s also Shakira time.
Yes, the 2026 World Cup has taken over North America. And with it comes the undisputed “Queen of the World Cup” — Shakira — who is making a record-setting fourth appearance at this global tournament that happens every four years.
Shakira already appeared once at this year’s festivities, singing the official 2026 World Cup song “Dai Dai” alongside Burna Boy during the kickoff match in Mexico City on June 11. And she’s set to co-headline the first-ever World Cup Finals halftime show on July 18 in New Jersey with Madonna and BTS.
In between those two milestones, which further cement her legacy as the ultimate World Cup entertainer, Shakira is finding time to play more shows on her blockbuster Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour in North America.
On Saturday, Shakira performed her second consecutive night at the SAP Center in San Jose, amping up the World Cup fever even more in a region that is already been swept up in a soccer frenzy due to matches being held at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. She’d deliver an equally enjoyable and energetic set consisting of more than two dozen songs for the fans who packed the Shark Tank to the rafters.
Some of these Bay Area Shakira supporters had surely seen this show before, back when the Colombian pop star entertained some 33,000 music lovers on a chilly June night at Oracle Park in San Francisco in 2025.
And they certainly aren’t alone in having witnessed the trek, given that Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (translation: "Women No Longer Cry") has now taken in well over $400 million in ticket sales and holds the Guinness World Record for the highest grossing tour of all time by a Latin artist.
Advertised as the “World Cup edition” of the tour, the road show that we witnessed on Saturday was pretty close to what was seen at Oracle Park in 2025, starting with the Shakira-led parade of dancers who’d make their way through the crowd and up onto the stage to kick off the 100-minute-plus main set with “La fuerte” and “Girl Like Me.”
And also like at Oracle, Shakira would make fans wait an obnoxiously long amount of time before she got the party started. In San Jose, the live music began a good hour after the 8:30 p.m. start time on the ticket. That’s a late start for a gig that drew a lot of families with young ones, plenty of whom were looking pretty tuckered out by the time the show was in its last laps.
Yet, Shakira is a first-rate entertainer and she kept the party lively and on track throughout most of the night, moving through a setlist that consisted of both Spanish- and English-language tunes. Her voice sounded great, handling both up-tempo pop tunes like “Can’t Remember to Forget You” and such torch ballads as “Antología” with equal success. And, of course, her dance moves - which draw from belly dancing as well as such Latin and Afro-Colombian styles as champeta and merengue — lived up to their nearly mythic status.
The stage show was colorful and ever-changing, with Shakira changing outfits on a pace that would impress even Cher and moving through a variety of themes/vague storylines (space-age robot dancers, Shakira as a mermaid, etc.). The stage itself was also pretty cool, with a long catwalk extending into the crowd from the main performance area. At the end of the catwalk was a platform that would lift the singer high above the heads of fans for dramatic effect.
One of the biggest highlights of the night came midway through the set as Shakira had fans all over the arena trying (most likely in vain) to emulate her moves as she grooved through her calling-card anthem “Hips Don’t Lie,” which was the first tune she performed for World Cup audiences back in 2006.
Still, the energy and enthusiasm level of the audience was definitely trending downward in the second half of the evening, as many of those who were once up and dancing decided to take their seats - even during the up-tempo songs. I couldn’t help but think that the late start factored into this equation.
Yet, Shakira righted the ship toward the end of the main set, with fans finding their second (or third or fourth) wind as the star powered into “Whenever, Wherever” and the official 2026 FIFA World Cup anthem “Dai Dai.”
Shakira stuck around in her World Cup catalog for one more song. And if you’re guessing that was the 2014 anthem “Dare (La La La)” then, well, you’d be wrong. For some reason, she’d leave that number - which, for our money, is her best soccer anthem - off the setlist.
Instead, Shakira went straight for the win, as the final minutes of the main set were ticking down, and scored with her blockbuster 2010 World Cup anthem “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).”
Shakira setlist
(Based on our notes and information from setlist.fm)
1. “La fuerte”
2. “Girl Like Me”
3. “Las de la intuición”/”Estoy aquí”
4. “Empire”/”Inevitable”
5. “Te felicito”
6. “TQG”
7. “Don’t Bother”
8. “Can’t Remember to Forget You”
9. “Acróstico”
10. “Copa vacía”
11. “La bicicleta”
12. “La tortura”
13. “Hips Don’t Lie”
14. “Chantaje”
15. “Loca”
16. “Zoo”
17. “Soltera”
18. “Ojos así”
19. “Pies descalzos, sueños blancos”
20. “¿Dónde estás corazón?”
21. “Antología”
22. “Underneath Your Clothes”
23. “Whenever, Wherever”
24. “Dai Dai”
25. “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”
Encore
26. “She Wolf”
27. “BZRP Music Sessions #53”
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This story was originally published June 21, 2026 at 9:42 AM.