Images depicting Yamal with keffiyeh at World Cup are AI-generated

Images spreading online after the Spanish men's national football team won the 2026 FIFA World Cup final purport to show star forward Lamine Yamal holding and praying over a Palestinian keffiyeh on the pitch. But while the 19-year-old phenom previously waved a Palestinian flag during his club FC Barcelona's La Liga title parade in May, the visuals that circulated following Spain's victory over Argentina were altered using artificial intelligence.

"A win for Spain... is a win for Palestine. Congratulations Espana," says a July 19, 2026 post sharing the images on Threads.

The first picture portrays Yamal on his knees and raising a checkered keffiyeh over his head. The second depicts him prostrating in prayer over the Arab headdress.

Similar posts spread across Threads and other platforms including Facebook ,  Instagram and X -- while  also appearing in  Spanish and Arabic .

Spain  defeated  Argentina 1-0 on July 19 behind a  thrilling extra-time goal  from Ferran Torres, marking La Roja's  second-ever World Cup victory and crushing Lionel Messi's dreams of consecutive titles in what was likely the 39-year-old's last appearance on football's biggest stage.

The win launched  Yamal and teammate Pau Cubarsi, also 19, into  elite company  as  two of just 10 teenage players to have ever won a World Cup.

Yamal, who is Muslim and was born to  immigrant parents from Morocco and Equatorial Guinea, previously  made headlines in May when he  held a Palestinian flag  from atop a bus as his club team FC Barcelona paraded through the city's streets to celebrate a La Liga championship title.

Cameras  captured the teenage sensation praying after the World Cup final referee whistled the match against Argentina over.

But the two images purporting to show Yamal celebrating with a keffiyeh -- a  traditional Arab headdress that has become a symbol for Palestinians -- were fabrications altered by AI. 

The earliest iterations AFP found of the keffiyeh fakes were shared by a self-described "AI artist and storyteller" on Instagram who goes by "@thelegend_ai." In a  bio on the platform Ko-fi.com, the user says: "I create high-quality cinematic visuals using advanced AI tools and platforms to deliver powerful messages" (archived here ).

AFP contacted the user for comment, but no response was immediately forthcoming.

OpenAI's image  verification tool found that both visuals contained SynthIDs -- the invisible watermarks  integrated from Google that  the company  embeds in AI-generated media created with its platforms (archived  here  and  here ).

The Hive Moderation tool likewise concluded that both images were "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content," attributing them to ChatGPT Image 2.0.

Unsurface , another media authentication tool that uses peer-reviewed methods to detect synthetic content, also found "forensic traces" that they were AI-generated.

Reverse image searches surfaced the original, unedited photos of a near-identical scene published by US news outlets such as The  Denver Post , with credit to the Associated Press (archived here ). The articles recounted Yamal's first World Cup goal in Spain's June 21 group stage game against Saudi Arabia. Spain won 4-0 .

The two photos -- in which Yamal was celebrating the goal but not holding a keffiyeh -- appear in the Associated Press's catalogue of photos (archived here and here ). Erik S. Lesser, who shared photos he took during the match to his social media, is listed as the photographer (archived  here ).

AFP  distributed additional photos of the goal celebration from different angles, while Yamal  posted a picture of the moment to Instagram (archived here ).

A review of Telemundo's broadcast of the Saudi Arabia match further corroborated that the Spanish star marked his goal without a keffiyeh.

AFP previously  debunked a separate AI-generated image depicting Yamal wrapped in a Palestinian flag after the World Cup final.

Read more fact-checks about the World Cup here .