The Enzo Fernandez celebration meme, explained

Updated 17 October 2026

The Enzo Fernandez celebration meme takes the TV shot of Enzo Fernández cupping his ears at England fans in the 2026 World Cup semi-final and puts someone else in his place with AI. It took off in October 2026, when edits of Taylor Swift, Max Verstappen, Dua Lipa, Lula and BTS’s V doing the “Topo Gigio” spread on TikTok, Instagram and X^[1,3,4]. Now people are making their own.

What the gesture itself means, and why it is called Topo Gigio, is on our page about the Enzo Fernandez celebration.

Where the meme comes from

The clip is from Argentina’s 2-1 win over England in the World Cup semi-final on 15 July 2026. Five minutes from time, Enzo Fernández equalised from outside the box, ran toward the England fans and held both open hands behind his ears ^[8,9,10]. In the broadcast shot he pushes his lips out at the crowd, then throws his arms up as his teammates arrive. Lautaro Martínez headed the winner in stoppage time ^[8].

The gesture travelled before any AI got involved: the next day an Argentine amateur golfer copied it at the British Open ^[11].

How the Enzo Fernandez meme became an AI trend

Three months later the clip came back as a template: the Enzo Fernandez celebration trend. By 12 October people on X were sharing an AI edit of Ariana Grande doing the celebration ^[5], and a YouTube upload carries the title “Ariana Grande doing Enzo Fernandez celebration vs. England” ^[6]. On 13 October the Argentine sports channel TyC Sports posted a compilation on Instagram as “el meme viral de Enzo Fernández”, the viral Enzo Fernández meme. It had about 544,000 likes when we checked on 17 October ^[2].

Verge Magazine’s explainer describes the format: AI video tools swap Enzo for celebrities and musicians but keep the gesture, the camera angle and the atmosphere, and the clips are shared as edits, not as real footage^[1]. In Portuguese, TikTok has a search page for “como colocar qualquer um na comemoração do Enzo Fernandez”: how to put anyone into Enzo Fernández’s celebration ^[7].

Who is in the celebrity edits

• BTS’s V (Taehyung), Taylor Swift, Max Verstappen, Dua Lipa and Lula, Brazil’s president: fan accounts named them in the TyC Sports compilation ^[3].
• Ariana Grande, in an edit shared on X and YouTube ^[5,6].

All of these are AI-generated. None of those people did the celebration.

Why the Enzo Fernandez celebration meme works

The shot does the work. The score bug, the floodlights and the teammates running in make it recognisable in a second, and the gesture says one thing everyone gets: I can’t hear you now. Put in someone who has no business on a World Cup pitch and the mismatch is the joke. It also fits the feed: about eight seconds, one clear move, and a payoff when the teammates arrive.

How to make your own Enzo Fernandez meme

There are three routes, compared step by step in how to make the Enzo Fernandez celebration AI video: a user-made CapCut template, a prompt in an image-to-video tool such as Dreamina or Higgsfield, or one photo on Enzo Fernandez AI. Ours keeps the original broadcast shot and puts you in Enzo’s place, in your own clothes, as a 9:16 clip for TikTok: $6.99 a video, less in packs.

Use your own photo, or a friend’s with their permission; the video service blocks celebrity photos. Some ideas for who to put in it:

• Yourself, as the reply in the group chat after your team wins.
• A friend who is in on the joke, for their birthday.
• Your five-a-side keeper after a clean sheet, if they say yes.

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