Which Team Has Won The Soft Power World Cup?
· Yahoo Sports
METLIFE STADIUM, EAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY, UNITED STATES - 2026/07/05: Erling Haaland of Norway beats the drum as players and staff of Norway perform the 'Viking Row' to celebrate the victory at the end of the FIFA World Cup 2026 round of 16 football match between Brazil and Norway. Norway won 2-1 over Brazil. (Photo by Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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LightRocket via Getty ImagesThe World Cup isn’t just a soccer tournament; it’s a global cultural, political and economic event that shapes people’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards the countries that participate in it.
FIFA’s showcase tournament helps to create a platform on which nations can build their brands, extend their influence, and drive their economies.
If a team performs well on the field, or if its players appear accessible or engaging off the field, this can create a positive and enduring image of their country around the world.
This is called soft power, a foreign policy tool that helps shape global opinions through means such as music, fashion, design and sport.
According to the late U.S. academic Joseph Nye, soft power is attractive power.
And the World Cup is perhaps the ultimate soft power platform, with 48 countries on show to billions of people.
So important is soft power nowadays that global rankings are published annually, with Brand Finance and Monocle as two examples.
Even soft power and sports rankings are regularly compiled, including one from the Polish Institute of Sport Diplomacy.
Ranking soft power and sport
After the 2022 World Cup, Dr Paul Widdop (of Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK) and I published our top 5 soft power winners from that tournament, and here we are doing so again for this year’s edition.
Widdop explains that “in a cluttered and complicated world, soft power continues to be one of the most effective means through which countries can stand out from their rivals whilst projecting a specific set of values and qualities”.
Drawing on academic literature and experts in the field, we developed a set of measures to assess this summer’s soft power winners, including data on social media buzz, team partnerships, and star players.
Our ranking is as follows:
1. Norway – collective self-belief
In first place, we assessed that Norway is the soft-power champion of the 2026 men’s World Cup, in a display of collective self-belief that has captured global attention.
The country’s talisman, Erling Braut Haaland, may have been one of the competition’s most lethal goal scorers, but his Viking-warrior-like appearance also engaged global audiences from the United States to China.
Haaland sometimes led Norway’s rowing celebration, banging a drum to accentuate Norwegian togetherness, as players and fans co-created soft power.
This was soft power in which playing success, celebrity, and clear societal values were all rolled into one.
Indeed, during one post-match interview, Haaland went so far as to say, “we’re nice people”.
2. France – luxurious indulgence
Reflecting their strong performances on the field, we place France second in our ranking.
This national team’s ongoing soft power is derived from luxurious indulgence, which was already signalled ahead of the tournament by its announcement of a collaboration with the label Jacquemus.
The Paris fashion house is known for its breathtaking fashion shows; during the World Cup, the French national team cultivated a similar reputation, players such as Kylian Mbappé and Michael Olise turning on the kind of style that commonly sees France at the top of global soft power rankings.
Watching France play has been the football equivalent of a cruise on the Seine or a stroll along the Champs-Élysées, something the French government actively promotes.
3. England – nostalgia-driven cool
Third is England, which prepared for the tournament by using The Beatles and a Yellow Submarine motif as the basis for its World Cup squad announcement.
This sense of nostalgia-driven cool has gained further impetus with the team’s players regularly joining English fans in post-match renditions of “Wonderwall” by Oasis, a global hit that has sold over 22 million copies since its release in 1995.
Jude Bellingham helped further this musical narrative, with stadiums often echoing to fans singing The Beatles’ 1968 track “Hey Jude”.
Widdop believes that “a national team has no soft power without its fans. They are the medium through which it travels”.
England is a country keenly aware of its cultural capital; hence its tournament-fashion link-up with Palace, a streetwear brand.
4. Mexico – warm-hearted celebration
When England played Mexico in the Round of 16, the latter’s coach, Javier Aguirre, was seen joking on the touchline with Bellingham and his teammate Anthony Gordon.
This moment went viral on social media, largely because it captured his country’s warm-hearted celebration of world football’s biggest event.
Despite pre-tournament drug-related crime and demonstrations, fourth-placed Mexico’s hosting of matches epitomised its open-armed welcome for overseas fans and the friendliness and passion of its people.
When adding to this mix an iconic stadium, the Azteca, the Central American country’s soft power carried a strong sense of authenticity.
5. Cabo Verde – triumph in adversity
Fifth is Cabo Verde, an archipelagic country in the central Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of West Africa. With a population of just over 500,000, this was the first time its national team had qualified for the World Cup.
A nation that often still struggles with post-colonial issues found itself thrust into the international spotlight when the mother of its goalkeeper, Vozinha, was denied entry to the country.
Yet it was triumph in adversity that characterised Cabo Verde’s tournament, as her story quickly garnered global sympathy, and the U.S. government waived its normal visa process so she could see her son play.
The team subsequently made it out of the group phase, generating the kind of feel-good soft power that should continue to serve the country well.
Sustaining soft power advantages
“France and England were perhaps unsurprisingly in our top 5”, says Widdop, “after all, they are always highly ranked in sport and soft power league tables”.
He continues, “But there were some real surprises, Norway being the most obvious one; people everywhere fell in love with them”.
The challenge now for all five nations is how to sustain and build upon their soft-power advantages, regardless of whether these were strategically achieved or even unintended.
FIFA’s 2030 tournament will tell us more about whether they succeed; in the meantime, politicians, business and cultural influencers alike would be wise to consider how they capitalise on their countries’ ranking success.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com