Top News

Keir Starmer in a Croatia jersey. An Iranian protest against a US strike. Calls to arrest Brazil's President Lula. Adolf Hitler in the German fan section — all circulating around the World Cup. But none of it is real.You may well have seen one of these images yourself. Some have racked up millions of views as they go viral on social media. One of the most-viewed photos shows a fan in the stadium wearing a Germany jersey, waving a German flag, and bearing a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler, a fake that DW's Fact Check team debunked shortly after Germany's World Cup match against Curacao. Some of these images we spot as fake right away; others we might easily mistake for real. Either way, they're having an effect. "It is an event that gets billions of people around the world from different countries, different regions, different political circumstances, all watching the same matches at the same time," said Henry Ajder, one of the world's leading experts on deepfakes and manipulative AI. "It is the perfect environment for people to start spreading deepfakes and AI generated content," he said, adding some were trying to change narratives to the rest of the world. That's exactly what's playing out on social media right now. Alongside the more lighthearted World Cup deepfakes, plenty carrying political messages are going viral too. DW Fact Check examined several of them and shows how you can spot the fakes yourself. An Iranian protest with a pink backpack? Before the conflict between Iran and the US had even ended, Iran kicked off its World Cup campaign against New Zealand, coming away with a point in a 2-2 (1-1) draw. But did one of the players really mark the result with a protest gesture? Claim: An image of an Iranian footballer holding up a pink backpack went viral on social media. "Paying tribute to the 168 school girls murdered by Donald Trump," reads one post that racked up around three million views. DW Fact Check: Fake The image doesn't show a scene from Iran's World Cup match, and it doesn't show any of Iran's actual World Cup players, either. No such protest took place during the match against New Zealand, and the player in the photo doesn't match anyone on Iran's World Cup squad.Iran's actual World Cup jersey looks different, too. The stadium doesn't match up either: the arena in the image looks noticeably different from the World Cup stadium in Los Angeleswhere the game was played; even the shape of the stands is different. The fake does have a real event behind it, though: Iranian fans staged genuine protests in the stands at the Los Angeles match, some commemorating children allegedly killed by the US in a school in the Iranian city of Minab. Reportingby outlets such as The New York Times and investigations by Bellingcathave pointed to possible US military involvement in that strike, which killed more than 150 people. But the viral image of a player protesting the incident is fabricated. Keir Starmer in a Croatia jersey? Would a British prime minister really pose in the rival team's jersey right before England's opening match? Seems unlikely, yet that's exactly what social media would have you believe. A viral image circulating on X shows Starmer smiling alongside three other people in a pub, all of them wearing Croatia jerseys — England's first opponent of the tournament. Claim: As England went on to win that opener 4-2 (2-2), users shared the photo with captions like "Spotted at the London Inn in Dallas before the England vs Croatia World Cup match" and "Starmer and his mates ready for the game." DW Fact Check: Fake A quick Google search for "Keir Starmer pub football fans"turned up the original photo:same pub, same people — including former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner — but different outfits. Three of them are wearing England jerseys, and Starmer is in a plain white T-shirt. The photo is actually two years old, taken around the 2024 European Championship in Germany. In other words, the jerseys were digitally altered, almost certainly with the help of an AI tool. The AI detector ZeroGPT flags a high probability that the image was AI-generated, and the jerseys themselves give it away: two have black collars, two have white ones, the Croatian federation (HNS) logos are blurry and inconsistent in size, and overall the jerseys look noticeably softer and less detailed than the sharply rendered faces. Croatia's current jerseys don't even look like the ones in the photo. Is this fan calling for Lula's arrest? Political protest isn't exactly welcome at the World Cup, but it keeps happening anyway, as the Iran example shows. Some cases, though, are worth a second look. Claim: "I'd trade the sixth title for Lula and Janja's imprisonment. Would you support that?" reads a sign supposedly held up by a fan, in a photo that's been circulating on X, among other places. DW Fact Check: Fake After a 1-1 draw to open the tournament against Morocco and a rocky run-up to the World Cup, it's still an open question whether Brazil can dream of a sixth title. What is clear, however, is that the fan's message is not real. ZeroGPT puts the probability that the image is AI-generated at 96%, and other AI detectors land in the same range. A closer look backs that up. The handwriting on the sign is suspiciously neat for something supposedly scrawled by hand: the letters are too even, and the cardboard's texture looks unnaturally smooth. The sign-holder's face has a glossy, idealized look that's become a telltale sign of AI generation. Zoom in further and the background gets stranger still, with some faces looking unfinished, almost melting into the wall behind them. Other versionsof this fake have also turned up, showing different people holding the exact same sign, and AI detectors flag those as generated too. A spectacular opening ceremony with an Iranian float? Around 1.2 billion peoplewatched the opening ceremony of the 2026 FIFA World Cup at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. Plenty of clips from it circulated on social media afterward, but some showed a show that simply never happened. Claim: A videoshared on X claims to show the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Cup. DW Fact Check: Fake The nearly five-minute clip shows fireworks, dance numbers, and performances representing the participating nations. The real opening ceremony looked quite different and featured different artistic elements. Watch closelyand the stadium itself gives it away. Across different shots, its roof is sometimes round, sometimes oval, sometimes open, sometimes closed, shape shifting repeatedly over the course of the "ceremony." Look even closer and the usual AI video tells appear: visual artifacts, warped objects, blurry faces. AI detectors again flag a high likelihood of generative AI here. A separate video claiming to show a giant golden float symbolizing Iranat the same ceremony has the same problem; the stadium changes shape mid-video there too. Deepfakes that leave a mark Thanks to AI tools that are now both widely available and easy to use, fakes like these can be whipped up in no time, and at a mega-event like the World Cup, they spread almost as fast. And they're not harmless: "These kinds of moments are really activating and really visceral to audiences. They play into narratives and really quite hot topics, so to speak, that people around the world are paying attention to," Ajder said. The takeaway for this World Cup: keep a close eye not just on the matches, but also on whatever's going viral online. This article was originally written in German.