Abandoned as a baby with severely underdeveloped limbs and raised by nuns in Baghdad, Kelly will perform at the World Cup finals alongside some of the world’s biggest stars.
Among the headline performers at the first-ever FIFA World Cup halftime show, alongside Shakira, BTS, Justin Bieber and Madonna, is a man with an incredible life story: Iraqi-born singer Emmanuel Kelly.
Kelly said she was found abandoned in a box as a baby and raised by nuns at Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Baghdad. Some of his limbs are severely stunted, and at the orphanage he befriends another boy named Ahmed who has a similar condition.
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In 1998, when Emmanuel was about four years old, Australian Catholic humanitarian Moira Kelly visited the orphanage and witnessed Emmanuel and Ahmed’s plight.
She decided to take the boys to Australia for treatment and was successful two years later.
Emmanuel and Ahmed arrived in Australia in 2000 and both underwent multiple surgeries to be able to wear prosthetic legs. They were adopted by Moira the same year and officially became Australian citizens in 2009.
In an interview published on FIFA’s website in 2025, Emmanuel said that the surgery and prosthetic leg had allowed him and his brother to be independent for the first time.
“We learned all the basic things that humans sometimes take for granted, like walking and feeding themselves,” he said. “Ultimately, I decided I wanted to pursue entertainment and music.”
In 2011, at the age of 17, Emmanuel was a contestant on the Australian version of the television talent show The X Factor. His rendition of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” captivated live audiences and received millions of views online. He was eliminated relatively early in the series because he forgot the lyrics to the song he was playing, but this marked the beginning of his musical career.
Meanwhile, his older brother Ahmed is a competitive swimmer who has represented Australia many times and won a silver medal in the men’s 150m individual medley at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.
In 2016, when the band Coldplay was preparing for a concert in Australia, lead singer Chris Martin saw a video of Emmanuel Kelly’s performance and decided to meet him. Kelly was invited on stage at a Coldplay concert in Melbourne to sing Imagine as a duet with Martin.
The two became friends and in 2024 Kelly was invited to be the headline opening act for four concerts in Australia during Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour.
“Chris was my brother, Chris Martin, about eight years ago and he said to me, ‘Hey, why don’t you come on tour with me and do a stadium tour?’ I did it, and it was pretty epic,” Kelly said in an interview with FIFA.
Last year, Martin was asked by FIFA to oversee the halftime show for the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Kelly was one of the singers Martin asked to participate in the performance. Organizers described him as “the first artist with a disability to headline the FIFA Halftime Show.”
Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina will be held at the same stadium. Martin will once again be overseeing the musical performance, and Kelly will be one of the people on stage for what FIFA hopes will be the most-watched halftime show in history.
“What an incredible opportunity to represent true, authentic world unity,” Kelly said in an Instagram video ahead of the show. “No matter how different you are, you will be seen.”
