Turning the World Cup into a global movement for civic freedoms

Communications strategy, Digital platforms, Strategy, Video and animation

Partner: CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation

Big results

Big Blue partnered with CIVICUS to develop and deliver the Global Solidarity Cup 2026, a six-week international digital advocacy campaign that ran alongside the FIFA World Cup. Using the language, excitement, and global reach of football, the campaign spotlighted human rights defenders, civic freedoms, and civil society movements worldwide. The campaign reached more than 791,000 people across Facebook and Instagram, generated significant audience engagement, and mobilised supporters through creative storytelling, athlete-inspired content, advocacy videos, and partner activation activities.

Story

Every four years, billions of people come together around the FIFA World Cup. CIVICUS recognised this rare moment of global attention as an opportunity to highlight another contest taking place around the world: the struggle to defend civic freedoms, human rights, and democratic participation.

The Global Solidarity Cup was designed as a parallel tournament where the players were activists, journalists, community organisers, lawyers, and human rights defenders working to protect the rights to speak freely, organise peacefully, and hold power to account. The campaign used football metaphors, storytelling, and digital engagement to help new audiences understand complex civic space issues and connect with the people defending those rights every day.

CIVICUS partnered with Big Blue to transform this ambitious concept into a global digital campaign capable of engaging audiences across multiple countries, platforms, and languages while maintaining a clear advocacy message and strong community participation.

Approach

Big Blue led the creative and digital delivery of the Global Solidarity Cup campaign from concept development through implementation and performance analysis. We translated CIVICUS’s civic space research into a football-inspired campaign framework built around familiar concepts such as player cards, red cards, tilted pitches, rigged referees, and crowd power. These visual metaphors helped make complex governance and human rights issues more accessible to broader audiences.

The campaign included the creation of social media content across Facebook and Instagram, human rights defender player cards, animated videos, advocacy reels, match-day content, solidarity actions, and partner activation toolkits. We also developed resources that enabled CIVICUS members and partners worldwide to participate in the campaign, share local stories, and amplify messages through their own networks.

As the campaign evolved, Big Blue also helped CIVICUS respond to emerging opportunities and challenges, including producing advocacy content addressing restrictions on digital civic space and platform moderation. The campaign remained agile, adapting content to global events while maintaining a consistent narrative focused on solidarity, accountability, and civic freedoms.

Results

The Global Solidarity Cup successfully transformed a major global sporting event into a platform for civic engagement and human rights advocacy. Across six weeks, the campaign generated more than 791,000 combined reach across Facebook and Instagram, creating significant visibility for CIVICUS’s civic space agenda despite major platform restrictions that affected paid promotion during the campaign.

Performance analysis revealed strong audience engagement across multiple content formats. Human rights defender and athlete-inspired player cards became the campaign’s strongest drivers of reach, website traffic, and follower growth, while short-form video content delivered exceptional engagement and virality. The campaign also demonstrated the effectiveness of using popular culture and sport as entry points for discussing complex social and political issues.

Beyond the numbers, the campaign provided CIVICUS with valuable insights into audience behaviour, platform-specific engagement strategies, and future advocacy opportunities. It strengthened collaboration across CIVICUS’s global network, amplified the voices of human rights defenders, and demonstrated how creative digital storytelling can connect civic action with moments of global cultural relevance.