EXPLAINER: Why World Cup Ball Must Be Charged Before Every Game

At the beginning of each match, match officials will have a brand-new routine when the 2026 World Cup kicks-off. They will have to stroll over to an electrical outlet, unplug the soccer balls and make sure they are fully charged. The match balls for this year’s Mundial are not just leather and air, it sounds crazy, but it does need a battery. It’s now a very sophisticated digital tracking device that takes out the element of human error from the game.

Each ball is packed with an extremely light digital sensor. For the last World Cup in Qatar, the engineers had to install this sensor in the middle of the ball with a complex network of tension wires. They have successfully developed the concept for the 2026 edition: The chip is now being reconsidered and reworked as part of one of the ball’s outer panels.

The ball will feel exactly the same as when kicked or headed, the sensor is completely invisible and will not change the weight or bounce of the ball. The sensor on the pitch is powered by a small battery, which lasts up to 6 hours when removed from the charging point.

The internal chip precisely records the location of the ball every time the player touches it. This data is not the whole story. It is accompanied by 12 high-tech tracking cameras directly under the stadium’s roof.

The cameras and the ball sensor are able to collectively determine the exact position of the ball and each individual player on the field fifty times a second.

This huge flow of live data directly into the Video Assistant Referee room. The system is able to determine the offside ruling and goal-line accuracy of a ball at the instant it was kicked and simultaneously the exact physical location of the players at that exact moment.

This connected ball network provides automatically generated, mathematically precise results in seconds, rather than waiting a few minutes for the referees to draw lines on a screen, which causes numerous game delays and controversy.