Album World Cup 2026 - A thought exercise

[Jose Glaucio]

Guys, I decided to create this thread to talk (play) about the 2026 World Cup Album. It's a thread that involves what we call, in philosophy, a thought exercise.

I know it's too early to speculate about the album, but I think it might be fun to think about it, based on our knowledge of previous albums and other collections, especially about the amount of stickers, since national teams is huge.

For example: is there a collection with 48 teams? If there is, how do they organize it?Will the double stickers come back? Etc.

How do you think the album will be?

1. How many stickers do you think you will have? I don't know what the maximum number of stickers per album was that Panini has done. If anyone has knowledge and can pass it on, that would be really cool.

Jokes aside about the album being huge, they will have to find a way to make a collectible collection, with a reasonable number of stickers.

Number of stickers on previous albums:
World Cup 70: 288
World Cup 74: 400
World Cup 78: 400
World Cup 82: 427
World Cup 86: 427
World Cup 90: 448
World Cup 94: 444
World Cup 98: 561
World Cup 2002: 581
World Cup 2006: 605
World Cup 2010: 640
World Cup 2014: 640
World Cup 2018: 670
World Cup 2022: 670

2. How do you think the initial part of it will be?
We have 3 venues, so I think we will have the official poster and, probably, three mascots, like in the 2002 World Cup.
It may be that the initial stickers are not doubles, but unique.
00 Panini
FIFA logo
Poster
Mexico mascot
USA mascot
Canada mascot

And we have 16 stadiums. It may be that they have printed stadiums or the same 16. But I don't think we will have stickers of the host city (1994 World Cup) and posters (2018 World Cup)

3. How will the selections be organized?

We will have 48 national teams, divided by:
8 of the AFC
9 of CAF
6 CONCACAF (maybe spread over 3+3 host countries)
6 CONMEBOL
1 OFC
16 UEFA
2 Playoffs

Do you think it keeps the same current configuration (18 players + Badge + Team)?

Decrease the number of players? Will the double figures return to the less expressive selections? (The last time they appeared was on the 2006 album). Will we have printed players like we have the team printed on some versions of the 2022 album? Maybe the winners' stickers won't come back.

And I'm already looking forward to the next album, so I play with thinking about it. What if we get the configuration right? Hahaha!

 

[Suisse]

Maybe 24 teams with single player and 24 teams with double players

 

[Guinness]

Did Panini extended their license with FIFA? It expires after Qatar if I am not mistaken?

 

[dantzig]

I guess it's too much to think about now, let the 2022 competition end and we can get back to this.

Btw, 2018 had 682 stickers (670 was the other version), 2006 had 596 and 2002 had 576... standard versions.

 

[Jamiepr74]

Maybe 24 teams with single player and 24 teams with double players

Similar to Mexico ‘86 with double player stickers then, hopefully not in 2026 as all teams should be treated fairly.

As long as Topps don’t have basic numbers much like the final few Premier League albums as there was so much debate about who was or wasn’t in the album. It’ll cost a small fortune either way with the increase in teams participating though.

At least one thing may be certain, Topps don’t produce Regional / International / Swiss variations so there may be less to collect overall hopefully.

Just a question though, maybe it’s been answered and I have missed it, but why exactly do Panini produce a separate Swiss edition of their albums? Is there some history there or something?

 

[bry17may]

The best solution for me would be to increase the number of sticker per pack to 6.

48 teams * 17 stickers = 816
34 additional stickers (First page, history, etc)

That means something like 850 stickers with 6 stickers per pack would be 142 packs (min), the last edition where 134 packs (min.) needed to complete it, an increase of 8 packs is not that much. There are another concerns, Panini should make better albums, I don't think the soft cover will be good enough to hold that many pages.

 

[Guinness]

Do we know anything about next WC?
Did Panini extend their license with FIFA?

 

[dantzig]

Do we know anything about next WC?
Did Panini extend their license with FIFA?

Hopefully not, so we can have Top...... forget it

Unless a third publisher suddendly appears, I think Panini will keep FIFA license... Topps should just "test the waters" with Euro and considering what we've seen, they still have to do a lot of work... so if they have problems with the Euro, better not even considering snatching World Cup from Panini.

 

[Suisse]

Unless a third publisher suddendly appears, I think Panini will keep FIFA license... Topps should just "test the waters" with Euro and considering what we've seen, they still have to do a lot of work... so if they have problems with the Euro, better not even considering snatching World Cup from Panini.

And don't forget , now , the play-offs will be play at March 2024 ( and the same for World Cup United 2026 , March 2026 for Europe ) , the 3 or 4 teams win stickers will be not available for March or April 2024 and 2026 .

 

[Fredboy7064]

Too many stickers for small collectors (like me) to handle. 6-8 stickers per pack would be good as long as they don't increase their prices a ridiculous amount.

 

[dantzig]

Too many stickers for small collectors (like me) to handle. 6-8 stickers per pack would be good as long as they don't increase their prices a ridiculous amount.

Panini is changing the stickers per packet, but for now, only in some leagues (like Spain and Portugal) where the price per sticker is not that different (just 1 or 2 cents cheaper)... I don't expect them to change for World Cups though, their profit for this last one was astounding with 1€ per 5 stickers.

 

[Fredboy7064]

Panini is changing the stickers per packet, but for now, only in some leagues (like Spain and Portugal) where the price per sticker is not that different (just 1 or 2 cents cheaper)... I don't expect them to change for World Cups though, their profit for this last one was astounding with 1€ per 5 stickers.

Yea, it seems like they want to get as much profit as they can from the world cup stickers and not so much for LaLiga and The Primeira Liga as those were the examples given by you.

 

[dantzig]

Yea, it seems like they want to get as much profit as they can from the world cup stickers and not so much for LaLiga and The Primeira Liga as those were the examples given by you.

The more profitable something is, the less they'll have any urge to change... The World Cup will always be the golden eggs chicken for any publisher, as it'll bring 10x, 20x, 100x(?) more collectors than everything else, including Euros... and after the pandemic, where "investing" started to trend (and ruined past collections from getting completed), it's less and less likely for prices per sticker to go down.

League stickers should be stable as I'm not seeing any reason to increase prices... or maybe theres is, because of the massive increase in prices due to war and speculation, so it may be affected too.

 

[Fredboy7064]

The more profitable something is, the less they'll have any urge to change... The World Cup will always be the golden eggs chicken for any publisher, as it'll bring 10x, 20x, 100x(?) more collectors than everything else, including Euros... and after the pandemic, where "investing" started to trend (and ruined past collections from getting completed), it's less and less likely for prices per sticker to go down.

League stickers should be stable as I'm not seeing any reason to increase prices... or maybe theres is, because of the massive increase in prices due to war and speculation, so it may be affected too.

I agree, the World Cup is a great way to pull in collectors from foreign countries (USA, Denmark etc). The Euros can pull some European collectors too. Meanwhile, the league collections only attract the people from the league that the stickers show.