With the 2026 FIFA World Cup well on its way, the Panini sticker fever has been raging through nearby playgrounds and homes alike. The 2026 edition might be a little bit special as it was recently revealed that Panini lost the exclusive rights. After fifty years of faithful partnership, FIFA moves the deal to Panini’s biggest competitor: the American Topps (owned by Fanatics). The 2030 World Cup sticker book will be Panini’s last FIFA-related book you can try to fill.
And perhaps that is a good thing? Local newspaper Het Nieuwsblad estimated that in order to complete your sticker book, statistically speaking you’ll need to buy around 7.300 stickers—totalling to the hefty sum of 1.600 EUR. I never realised that filling your sticker book could be that expensive! That’s even more expensive than your average Magic: the Gathering modern deck—and that hobby can be expensive. Considering most feverish collectors are youngsters in primary school, it might even be called outrageous.
For the previous World Cup, this would be roughly 1.000 EUR. Is has never been as expensive as now. Why? Panini cites The Usual Suspects: rising manufacturing and shipping costs. I don’t entirely buy that. My own little investigation, comparing previous Panini stickers I still had lying around, yield another nasty surprise: not only has the cost gone up, but the quality has gone down as well. My Aladdin Panini stickers I collected in the nineties had a nice gloss finishing that resists scratches. That finishing is gone now, but the biggest change is the sticker size.
A quick dimension comparison (measured in centimetres):
| Set | Width | Height | Total Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disney Aladdin (1994) | 5,0 | 7,5 | 37,5 |
| FIFA Euro 2020 | 5,4 | 6,5 | 35,1 |
| FIFA World Cup 2026 | 5,0 | 6,5 | 32,5 |
In 30 years, Panini stickers have shrunk in size by almost 14%. The reasoning behind this is due to the massive team size of the World Cup, having so many stickers would otherwise cause the sticker book to weigh as much as a heavy textbook. So this “shrinkflation” effect is disguised as a way to protect our children’s backs. Clever.
Another aspect of the nineties stickers I miss is the variability of them. In my Aladdin album, I sometimes could paste in just half of an image. A scenery from the animated movie, such as the Genie in a parade swirling around with fire-lit batons as depicted in the sticker of the photo above, would be split into two stickers, making it extra satisfying to “complete” just that one scene instead of the entire book (which I never bothered to do or didn’t manage to, I can’t remember how I felt about it).
In addition, some of the stickers depicted just the characters in a translucent cut-out shape. I found these stickers to be more fun and desirable to paste in compared to the standard shaped ones that came with a yellow border. Of course, comparing a whimsical Disney animated film to a national football team where you just have to paste in every team member according to their position on the field diminishes the creative options Panini has to play around with the setting. To me, the FIFA stickers have always been one of the more boring sets. Perhaps the contract is not a big loss, although financially speaking, given the typical World Cup craze, I bet it is.
According to another local news article, Panini’s expected turnover for this World Cup would be in the billions in euro. Yet this FIFA deal loss is one of the many losses: no more UEFA Champions League stickers, no more European Championship, and now also no more World Cup. In USA, they also lost the rights to print NBA and NFL stickers. There are rumours of yet another complete Panini sellout because of all this. The article also mentions the interesting history of the Italian company: in the nineties it was even briefly sold to comic giant Marvel Entertainment!
Did you know there are Sonic sticker collections? Super Mario Ones? Hot Wheels? L.O.L. Surprises? Harry Potter, Jurassic Parc, Toy Story 5, Stitch, Tour De France, Darts, Frozen, Spider Man, … You name it, they have it. Did you also know the second hand market is cutthroat when it comes to unopened vintage card packs? As I wrote before, this really does feel like unopened Magic: the Gathering booster boxes…
If you want to complete your collection but can’t because of limited local trading opportunities, there’s also the option to buy singles directly from Panini. They know fans want a complete sticker album, so expect to drop more for specific requests. The best strategy? Wait until the World Cup fever passes and then buy everything. The interviewee from Het Nieuwsblad managed to procure all FIFA Euro 2024 stickers for just €70.
Good luck with the sticker hunt. Don’t forget to play fair: never trade two-for-one!
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