Katy Perry Debuts “Wonder” With 10-Year-Old Norwegian Singer at World Cup Opener

Ten minutes before the United States faced Paraguay in the opening match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Katy Perry took the field at SoFi Stadium in a glittering silver dress. Beside her stood Tius Luka, a 10-year-old Norwegian singer whose voice had been waiting for this moment since before he could read.

The pair performed “Wonder,” a track from Perry’s 2025 album 143. Luka sang the opening and closing lines, a part he originally recorded in 2021, at age five. Perry first heard that vocal two years later and built the song around it. “I heard his vocal in 2023 and was inspired to write the verses for ‘Wonder’ and added it to my sixth album,” she wrote on social media ahead of the ceremony. “Tius is 10 now and flew all the way to LA from Norway to sing this song with me.”

The performance was a short set piece, surrounded by flags and capped with Perry lifting the boy into a hug as the stadium cheered. It stood apart from the high-voltage openers earlier in the day—Future, Tyla, and Lisa of Blackpink among them—and from the parallel ceremony in Toronto, where Canadian artists from Michael Bublé to Alanis Morissette marked the tournament’s start.

The Los Angeles show was one of three opening ceremonies FIFA staged across North America, each calibrated to local and global audiences. Perry’s turn, anchored by a collaborative gesture stretching back years, offered a quieter kind of spectacle: a pop star and a child singing a song that was, in part, already his.