FIFA Signs With Fanatics and Topps. The 2030 World Cup Album Will Be Panini's Last.FIFA Has Signed a Long-Term Deal With Fanatics and Topps. The 2030 Album Will Be the Last Panini World Cup Album Ever.For generations of children across Italy and much of the world, the World Cup sticker album was as much a part of the tournament as the matches themselves. The smell of a fresh pack, the ritual of checking for doubles, the frantic trading in school corridors, the eternal quest for the last impossible sticker: all of it was Panini, the Modena company that has been producing World Cup sticker albums since 1970. From 2031, it will no longer be. FIFA and Fanatics announced on 7 May that they have signed a long-term exclusive collectibles licensing agreement covering trading cards, stickers and trading card games, with products developed by Fanatics Collectibles and produced under the Topps brand. The deal begins in full in 2031 and covers both physical and digital collectibles.  Panini has held the FIFA trading card and sticker rights since 1970. The 2026 World Cup album, which launched globally on 30 April, and the 2030 World Cup album will be the last two Panini World Cup sticker albums ever produced. After that, the rights pass to an American company.  What Is Fanatics and Why Does It Matter Fanatics, founded and led by Michael Rubin, has already cornered the trading card market for the three major American professional sports leagues, taking the NBA, NFL and MLB card licences away from Panini in recent years. The FIFA deal is its largest single move yet in the global sports collectibles market.  Fanatics is not simply inheriting the old sticker model. The company has made clear it intends to reshape FIFA collectibles around scarcity, memorabilia and chase cards, the elements that have driven explosive growth in American sports card collecting in recent years. The deal also includes digital collectibles, giving FIFA and Fanatics scope to build products well beyond the traditional sticker album format.  FIFA president Gianni Infantino said: "Across the sports landscape, we see that Fanatics are driving massive innovation in collectibles that provides fans with a new, meaningful way to engage with their favourite teams and players. From FIFA's point of view, we can globalise that fan engagement precisely thanks to our global tournament portfolio."  Panini has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Fanatics in response to the wave of licence losses.  The 2026 Album: The Beginning of the End The irony is that the Panini World Cup 2026 album, which has just gone on sale, is in many ways the most ambitious the company has ever produced. With 48 teams competing for the first time, the album contains 980 stickers across 112 pages, the largest World Cup sticker collection Panini has ever made. Each of the 48 teams has its own page with 20 stickers: 18 player stickers, one team photo and one federation badge. Packs now contain seven stickers, the most since 2014.  Collectors and fans who buy this album are participating in what is now a known countdown. Two more albums remain. Then, for the first time since 1970, the World Cup will arrive without Panini. What Italy Stands to Lose Panini was founded in Modena in 1961 by the Panini brothers and grew into one of Italy's most recognisable cultural exports, a company whose product crossed class, geography and language to become a genuinely universal childhood experience. The World Cup album in particular was not simply a commercial product. It was a shared ritual, reproduced in substantially similar form across dozens of countries and across six decades. The transition to an American model built around scarcity, memorabilia inserts and digital collectibles will produce something different. It may produce something more financially valuable. It will almost certainly produce something less universally accessible. A €1.20 pack of stickers that any child could buy at a newsagent's kiosk is a different cultural object from a premium trading card product optimised for adult collectors and secondary market investors. The 2030 album will be the last. There are children alive today for whom that album will be their first. They will not know, filling it in, that they are completing something that will not come again.

FIFA Has Signed a Long-Term Deal With Fanatics and Topps. The 2030 Album Will Be the Last Panini World Cup Album Ever. For generations of children across Italy and much of the world, the World Cup sticker album was as much a part of the tournament as the matches themselves. The smell of a fresh pack, the ritual of checking for doubles, the frantic trading in school corridors, the eternal quest for the last impossible sticker: all of it was Panini, the Modena company that has been producing World Cup sticker albums since 1970. From 2031, it will no longer be. FIFA and Fanatics announced on 7 May that they have signed a long-term exclusive collectibles licensing agreement covering trading cards, stickers and trading card games, with products developed by Fanatics Collectibles and produced under the Topps brand. The deal begins in full in 2031 and covers both physical and digital collectibles.  Panini has held the FIFA trading card and sticker rights since 1970. The 2026 World Cup album, which launched globally on 30 April, and the 2030 World Cup album will be the last two Panini World Cup sticker albums ever produced. After that, the rights pass to an American company.  Fanatics, founded and led by Michael Rubin, has already cornered the trading card market for the three major American professional sports leagues, taking the NBA, NFL and MLB card licences away from Panini in recent years. The FIFA deal is its largest single move yet in the global sports collectibles market.  Fanatics is not simply inheriting the old sticker model. The company has made clear it intends to reshape FIFA collectibles around scarcity, memorabilia and chase cards, the elements that have driven explosive growth in American sports card collecting in recent years. The deal also includes digital collectibles, giving FIFA and Fanatics scope to build products well beyond the traditional sticker album format.  FIFA president Gianni Infantino said: "Across the sports landscape, we see that Fanatics are driving massive innovation in collectibles that provides fans with a new, meaningful way to engage with their favourite teams and players. From FIFA's point of view, we can globalise that fan engagement precisely thanks to our global tournament portfolio."  Panini has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Fanatics in response to the wave of licence losses.  The irony is that the Panini World Cup 2026 album, which has just gone on sale, is in many ways the most ambitious the company has ever produced. With 48 teams competing for the first time, the album contains 980 stickers across 112 pages, the largest World Cup sticker collection Panini has ever made. Each of the 48 teams has its own page with 20 stickers: 18 player stickers, one team photo and one federation badge. Packs now contain seven stickers, the most since 2014.  Collectors and fans who buy this album are participating in what is now a known countdown. Two more albums remain. Then, for the first time since 1970, the World Cup will arrive without Panini. Panini was founded in Modena in 1961 by the Panini brothers and grew into one of Italy's most recognisable cultural exports, a company whose product crossed class, geography and language to become a genuinely universal childhood experience. The World Cup album in particular was not simply a commercial product. It was a shared ritual, reproduced in substantially similar form across dozens of countries and across six decades. The transition to an American model built around scarcity, memorabilia inserts and digital collectibles will produce something different. It may produce something more financially valuable. It will almost certainly produce something less universally accessible. A €1.20 pack of stickers that any child could buy at a newsagent's kiosk is a different cultural object from a premium trading card product optimised for adult collectors and secondary market investors. The 2030 album will be the last. There are children alive today for whom that album will be their first. They will not know, filling it in, that they are completing something that will not come again.