Yoruba meets Spanish, Burna Boy meets Shakira - How Nigerian music is travelling to Latin America

• Spotify's H1 2026 Global Impact List highlights how Nigerian artists are expanding their international reach through major cross-cultural partnerships, combining indigenous Nigerian languages and Pidgin with global genres.

• High-profile Afro-Latin collaborations lead the rankings—topped by Burna Boy and Shakira’s FIFA World Cup song 'Dai Dai' along with Rauw Alejandro and Wizkid’s 'PONGO'.

• The list underscores how tracks like Rema’s multilingual release 'Goals' — blending Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, and Pidgin—are prioritised for organic, borderless discovery over traditional language limits.

The latest rankings offer fresh insight into Nigeria's growing influence on the global music landscape. Rather than being defined by a single sound or language, they highlight a new era where artists seamlessly blend Yoruba, Igbo, Nigerian Pidgin, and English with other global languages to reach listeners around the world. 

Latin America meets West Africa

Leading the rankings is a growing wave of collaborations that bring together artists and languages from West Africa and Latin America.

At the top of Nigeria's H1 2026 export rankings is Burna Boy and Colombian icon Shakira’s Dai Dai, the official anthem of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which brings together Spanish and English in a cross-continental collaboration.

Latin American crossovers continue down the rankings, with Puerto Rican star Rauw Alejandro teaming up with Wizkid and Jamaican producer Rvssian on PONGO. These collaborations demonstrate how Spanish and West African dialects are creating new connections between artists, cultures, and audiences around the world. The wider trend is also reflected in Spotify’s Afro Ritmo playlist, which features a range of Afro-Latin collaborations that connect Nigerian and other African artists with Latin American voices and sounds.

A truly multilingual catalogue

The rankings also highlight collaborations that bring together multiple languages and cultures within a single track.

Rema features alongside Brazilian pop powerhouse Anitta, K-Pop superstar LISA, and FIFA Sound on Goals, a release that blends Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, and Nigerian Pidgin into one global collaboration. The result is music that resonates across cultures, showing that shared creativity and cultural connection matter more than speaking the same language.

When music speaks every language

Spotify's first-half 2026 Global Impact List reflects how listeners are increasingly discovering music beyond language barriers.  Whether in Yoruba, Igbo, Nigerian Pidgin, Spanish, Portuguese, French or Korean, today's global hits are connecting audiences through shared emotion, culture and creativity. 

As Nigerian artists continue collaborating across borders and languages, they are expanding the country's global music footprint while introducing new audiences to the richness and diversity of Nigeria's music scene.

Explore the five Nigerian tracks with the strongest international streaming performance on Spotify in the first half of 2026 below. 

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