In Argentina, the countdown to the 2026 FIFA World Cup is showing up not just in team jerseys and match-day plans, but in everyday commerce at neighborhood plazas, where fans spread out sticker books and duplicates and negotiate swaps. With less than a month until the tournament begins, thousands of people have been meeting in public squares to trade the colorful player cards that make up Panini’s official stickerbooks.
For decades, the stickers have been folded into the World Cup experience through schoolyard bartering and informal trading networks, but in 2026 the activity appears to be accelerating. On Sunday, crowds gathered in the heart of Buenos Aires exchanging sticker packets and cards featuring famous players, with some laying out stickers on tables the way dealers handle cards in games. Children carried the books where they carefully pasted new stickers, while adults coordinated trades and looked for the rare pieces they still needed.
Juan Valora, a fan who was trading stickers with his girlfriend, described the appeal of doing it face to face. “This connects you with the world. Everyone does it,” Valora said, adding that if the hobby were only virtual, “you wouldn’t be face to face looking at the cards and trading them. I think you’d miss out a bit on the human touch.”
Panini has positioned the new run of sticker collecting around the World Cup’s larger field of teams, which expands participation from 32 to 48 countries. The company launched what it described as its largest sticker collection ever for this World Cup, and each pack contains seven stickers. In Argentina and Uruguay, the price of a pack is about $1.50, according to the reporting.
The trade can be as much about strategy as about chance. Some collectors say they avoid traditional swapping by buying large quantities of packs—up to 104 packs for $180—payable in installments, and bundled options that come with albums. The same reporting notes that even stickers labeled “rare,” including those featuring players such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappé, are available through these routes.
For families, the goal often becomes finishing the album on time. Matías Inglesi, a software developer and father of 9-year-old Lucas, said he spends about $20 a week on the hobby. Inglesi said some people buy in bulk as a way “to avoid spending extra money to finally complete it,” while parents step in to help children reach the end of the set.
Child psychologist Agustina Zerbinatti said the hobby offers more than a “fun challenge.” She said the activity helps children develop fine motor skills and learn concepts including “from geography, knowing which languages are spoken in each country, number sequencing and notions of cardinality and ordinality.”
Even as fans chase the last missing stickers, the long-term arrangement has a clear deadline: the legendary stickerbooks will come to an end after the 2030 World Cup, when Fanatics takes over as FIFA’s exclusive sticker partner. For many collectors, the current season’s trading fever is therefore not only about completing an album, but also about keeping a tradition alive through its final World Cup cycles under the Panini brand.