Europe Turns Up the Volume on VAR: Referees Begin Explaining Big Calls Over Stadium PAs

The roar inside a packed Bundesliga stadium had barely subsided when the referee stepped away from the pitch-side monitor and did something that, until recently, would have been unthinkable in top-level European football.

“After VAR review, offside in the build-up. The goal is disallowed,” he said, his voice carried clearly through the public-address system and into millions of living rooms.

The decision was not new — video assistant referees have been overturning goals and penalties since 2018. The explanation was. And it underscored a quiet but significant shift now spreading across the sport: football’s law-makers and leading leagues are testing whether a short announcement from the referee can make VAR more transparent, and more tolerable, for players and fans.

At the same time, some of the game’s biggest competitions are holding the line, keeping VAR deliberations largely behind closed doors. The result is a fragmented landscape in which what supporters hear — or do not hear — about crucial calls increasingly depends on which competition they are watching.

From trial to the Laws of the Game

The push to let referees explain VAR decisions in real time began at the International Football Association Board, the body that writes football’s Laws of the Game.

On Jan. 18, 2023, at its annual business meeting at Wembley Stadium in London, the board agreed to test “the communication of the referee’s final decision after a VAR review to the public in the stadium and to TV audiences” at international competitions. Pierluigi Collina, who chairs FIFA’s referees committee and advises IFAB, said at the time that the move was a response to “requests to make the decision taken by the referee after a VAR intervention more understandable for spectators in the stadium and on television.”

The trial was formally confirmed at IFAB’s 137th annual general meeting on March 4, 2023. It cleared the way for FIFA to implement live announcements at its own tournaments, starting with the Club World Cup in Morocco.

There, in February 2023, Chinese referee Ma Ning became one of the first officials in a FIFA competition to use the system, overturning a penalty to Al Ahly against Auckland City and then explaining to the stadium and television audience that, after review, the foul had occurred outside the penalty area and was also a red-card offense.

The most visible test came a few months later. At the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, referees’ microphones were patched to stadium speakers after VAR reviews. In the opening match in Auckland on July 20, Japanese referee Yoshimi Yamashita checked a handball incident on the monitor, awarded New Zealand a penalty against Norway and then told the crowd and global audience what had been reviewed and why the spot kick had been given. FIFA officials described the process as a way to make VAR “more understandable” and likened it to practices in the National Football League and rugby union.

After a year of these experiments, IFAB went further. At its 139th annual general meeting in Belfast in early 2024, the board amended the Laws so that competitions using VAR “have the option for the referee to make an in-stadium announcement to explain their decision after a VAR review or lengthy VAR check.” The private dialogue between the referee and the video assistant remains confidential, but the final explanation can now, if a competition chooses, be broadcast in real time.

A simple script, with local variations

Under the model tested by FIFA and adopted by several domestic leagues, the basic sequence is the same.

When the VAR recommends a review, the referee either accepts the information for factual matters such as offside, or goes to the referee review area to watch replays. Once a final decision is made and communicated to the players, the referee activates a dedicated audio channel to the public-address system — often by pressing a button on a headset — and delivers a short message.

Leagues that have trialed the system say the wording is deliberately concise and structured. The German Football League, which runs the Bundesliga, requires that announcements include three elements: the incident reviewed, the outcome of the review and the final decision.

A typical explanation might sound like: “VAR check for possible handball in the penalty area. After on-field review, handball confirmed. Penalty to the home team.”

FIFA tournaments have generally required officials to announce decisions in English to suit global broadcasts, even when the referee’s first language is different. Domestic leagues are opting to use local languages, with some referee chiefs also standardizing key phrases to avoid confusion.

Gianluca Rocchi, the former international referee who now heads Italy’s Serie A officiating department, said ahead of the 2025-26 season that allowing referees to speak directly to the crowd marked “an important step forward in communication,” while stressing that officials would be trained to use clear, repeatable formulas.

Bundesliga, Serie A and others step forward

Since IFAB declared announcements permissible, several major European competitions have moved from discussion to implementation.

In Germany, the Bundesliga and second-tier Bundesliga 2 ran a pilot project on Matchday 20 of the 2024-25 season, with referees in nine stadiums wired to explain decisions when they went to the monitor or changed an earlier call following a VAR intervention. After what league officials described as a positive evaluation, the DFL announced that, from the 2025-26 season, referees in all Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 matches would make announcements after on-field reviews or decisions altered by VAR.

“The goal is to further increase the transparency of referee decisions,” the DFL said, noting that for spectators in the stadium “the reasons for decisions are not always immediately clear.”

Italy has followed a similar path. Serie A first upgraded its stadium graphics, introducing a “VARDict” system on big screens to show the nature of checks and reviews. The Italian federation then tested live announcements in the Coppa Italia semi-finals and final, before Rocchi confirmed that on-field explanations would become a regular feature of league matches from 2025-26.

France committed early in principle. In April 2024, French Football Federation president Philippe Diallo told broadcaster beIN Sports that FIFA had authorized Ligue 1 referees to be mic’d so that “when he goes to see the VAR screen, he turns towards the public, turns towards the broadcaster and explains what he saw and the resulting decision.”

Diallo said a first major test would be the Coupe de France final on May 25, 2024, between Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain, as well as women’s championship playoffs. But full rollout in Ligue 1 has been slowed by infrastructure costs. French sports daily L’Équipe reported in early 2026 that approximately 600,000 euros in stadium sound-system upgrades were needed to support the project, and that second-tier Ligue 2 still could not afford to implement VAR at all.

England has taken a more cautious route. The first in-stadium announcements by referees in an English competition came in the 2023-24 League Cup semi-finals and final, in a joint pilot by the English Football League and the Professional Game Match Officials Limited.

At a meeting of Premier League clubs in June 2024, teams voted to keep VAR and approved a six-point improvement plan that included in-stadium announcements by referees after a decision was changed following a VAR review. However, reporting at the time indicated that many top-flight managers opposed immediate introduction for league matches, arguing that putting officials on the microphone risked creating new flashpoints and subjecting them to greater hostility.

The Premier League’s 2025-26 handbook now obliges clubs to participate in IFAB trials involving “referee’s announcement of VAR related decisions” and to support stadium announcements and related technologies. League documentation and subsequent references to VAR usage indicate that in-stadium explanations are being phased into top-flight matches from the 2025-26 season onward.

UEFA and La Liga keep conversations limited

While domestic leagues have moved ahead, UEFA — which runs the Champions League, Europa League and European Championship — has so far declined to adopt on-field explanations to the crowd.

At Euro 2024 in Germany, UEFA used full VAR teams, semi-automated offside technology and balls equipped with contact sensors, but it did not allow referees to broadcast explanations over the stadium PA. Instead, the confederation introduced a protocol under which referees were instructed to explain decisions more clearly to team captains on the field.

After the tournament, UEFA described this captain-only approach as “an unquestionable step forward” in communication between match officials and players. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has previously been critical of VAR’s overreach, calling the system “a mess” in a 2019 interview and warning against eliminating all uncertainty from football.

Spain’s top flight, La Liga, has also stopped short of putting referees on the microphone. The Spanish federation has instead experimented with releasing selected VAR audio recordings after major matches, including Spanish Super Cup games and some Clásico meetings between Barcelona and Real Madrid. Those releases are presented as a transparency measure, though critics in Spain have complained that they are selective and edited.

Barcelona coach Hansi Flick and Atlético Madrid president Enrique Cerezo are among figures in Spanish football who have publicly urged referees and authorities to communicate more openly about VAR decisions, with Cerezo arguing that video technology has “cost referees a lot of authority.”

Transparency, pressure and a divided soundscape

Supporters who have experienced the new system describe it as both clarifying and limited. Short announcements can help explain complex offside lines or handball interpretations that are not obvious from a replay alone. But some fans and referees argue on social media and in interviews that a one-sentence script often adds little detail and can feel forced.

For referees, the change means more than just pushing a button. Collina has acknowledged that speaking live in a second language to a global audience is not easy. German VAR official Jochen Drees said in a domestic interview that “not everyone will feel comfortable having their voices heard in a stadium,” even as he supported the goal of closer communication.

There are also concerns about safety and abuse. A clear announcement can focus frustration on one identifiable voice, potentially increasing the intensity of boos or insults in the moments after a contentious call. At the same time, the recorded explanation may help protect referees and leagues in disciplinary or appeals processes, offering evidence of how the law was applied at the time.

Economically, broadcasters generally favor clean, authoritative explanations that fit television narratives, and in-play betting companies can use structured announcement timings to help manage when markets are suspended or reopened during VAR checks.

For now, though, football is left with a patchwork. On one weekend, a supporter in Germany, Italy or England may hear a referee calmly clarify a disallowed goal. Three days later, watching a Champions League knockout tie or a La Liga match, the same supporter may be left watching a “VAR check in progress” graphic with no verbal explanation.

The Laws of the Game now allow referees to speak. Whether Europe’s biggest competitions decide to turn up the volume will shape not just how VAR works, but how visible and accountable match officials appear in a sport still wrestling with the technology that was meant to make it fairer.