What was claimed
Images show footballer Lamine Yamal celebrating Spain’s World Cup victory draped in a Palestinian flag.
Our verdict
These images aren’t real and were made with artificial intelligence.
Pictures that appear to show the footballer Lamine Yamal celebrating Spain’s World Cup victory draped in the Palestinian flag aren’t real, and were made using artificial intelligence.
The pictures have been shared thousands of times across X, Facebook and Instagram.
One image appears to be taken from above, with Yamal holding the World Cup trophy with one hand on his hip.
Using reverse image search we found the original, unedited image which shows Yamal wearing the Spanish flag instead, with the same man holding camera kit and another wearing a medal behind him.
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Although Yamal waved a Palestinian flag during FC Barcelona’s La Liga victory parade in May, there are no reliable reports of him doing something similar during Spain’s World Cup victory on Sunday.
We also found the image being shared on social media contained an invisible SynthID watermark indicating it was “generated with OpenAI tools” such as ChatGPT, the OpenAI API or Codex.
Other fake images shared online supposedly showed Yamal wearing the Palestinian flag with a different background or even wearing a different kit.
These images also contained invisible SynthID watermarks indicating they were generated with OpenAI and Google tools respectively.
We’ve published several articles about the 2026 World Cup, including fact checks of a viral image of an Iranian footballer holding a pink school bag that was made with AI and false claims that Harry Kane refused to wear a rainbow symbol in matches.
