The brands that win during the FIFA World Cup 2026 are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that understand who is actually watching, and what watching means to them. For Hispanic and Latino communities in the United States, the World Cup is not just a sporting event. It is a ritual. A reason to gather. A multigenerational tradition that plays out in living rooms, not stadiums. That insight is precisely where IKEA has planted its flag.
The Campaign
IKEA's "El Lineup de Tus Sueños" is a Spanish-language brand activation running across TV, CTV, social, OOH, radio, and digital. Created by alma, the campaign positions IKEA's sofas, snack tables, and home furnishings as the infrastructure for the perfect watch party. The creative does not reach for spectacle. It reaches for the living room, because that is where the match actually lives for this audience.
Jessica Santiago-Byrd, senior manager for growth and multicultural marketing at IKEA, put the strategy plainly: the goal is not visibility, it is emotional relevance. Connecting with consumers through their everyday rituals, their values, and the moments that matter to them at home.
Why the Data Makes This a No-Brainer
The cultural logic behind this campaign is airtight, and the numbers confirm it. According to GWI, Hispanic and Latino consumers in the US are 50% more likely to follow the World Cup than the average American. Their relationship with soccer is not casual fandom; it is generational and identity-rooted.
Seventy percent of Hispanic and Latino consumers say that spending time with family is important to them. They over-index on home gathering and multigenerational living. The watch party is not a lifestyle trend for this audience. It is how they have always watched the game.
What makes this commercially significant for IKEA is that Hispanic and Latino shoppers already represent 22% of their US customer base over the last three months. This is not an outreach play to a distant audience. It is an activation aimed squarely at a core segment of people who already have a relationship with the brand.
Signal, our cultural intelligence tool at Mana Partners, tracked 6,283 cultural signals across eight markets to map where soccer fandom and World Cup viewing intersect with the home. The findings show that Spanish-language soccer terms are accelerating in cultural conversation, and that IKEA's campaign is entering exactly the right lane: the watch-party-at-home cluster, where furniture and Hispanic soccer culture already share content space on TikTok.
What IKEA Got Right
The strongest multicultural campaigns do not translate a message. They start from a different place entirely.
IKEA did not take a generic World Cup campaign and add a Spanish voiceover. "El Lineup de Tus Sueños" is built from a cultural truth: that for Hispanic families, home is not the fallback option when you cannot get a ticket. Home is the preference. It is where the ritual lives.
Santiago-Byrd described the broader ambition clearly: from language accessibility to creative execution to media placement, every touchpoint is designed to feel intentional and reflective of the communities being engaged. That is a different brief than "reach Hispanic consumers during the World Cup." It is a brief about belonging.
The campaign also sidesteps the most common trap in multicultural marketing, which is treating it as a moment. IKEA's stated goal is a connection that lasts beyond the tournament. That orientation, toward long-term cultural relevance rather than short-term impressions, is what separates a brand that understands an audience from one that is simply borrowing from it.
The Broader Signal for Brands
The World Cup will generate enormous amounts of brand activity over the coming weeks. Most of it will look the same: jerseys, goals, patriotic copy, and a logo in the corner.
What IKEA has done is different in kind, not just in execution. They identified a specific cultural group, mapped their actual behaviour and values, built creative rooted in those truths, and showed up in the language and media environments where that audience lives. The result is a campaign that does not interrupt the moment. It becomes part of it.
For brands assessing their own multicultural strategies, the IKEA play is worth studying closely. Not because Spanish-language content is the answer for everyone, but because the methodology is transferable. Start with the cultural insight. Build outward from there.
If you are a brand looking to activate around major cultural moments in a way that builds genuine long-term relevance with specific communities, Mana Partners helps you make lore, not noise.
Author
Seif Seoudy
We build brands that speak the language of gamers. Authentic, electrifying, unforgettable.
