With the 2026 FIFA World Cup a month away, Buenos Aires’ plazas have transformed into open-air trading floors where thousands of Argentines swap multicolored decks of stickers bearing the faces of soccer stars like Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé, the Associated Press reported.
The scene on Sunday captured a Panini tradition that has been part of South American culture for decades, with families, children, and collectors bartering for rare stickers laid out on tables like poker hands.
“This connects you with the world. Everyone does it,” said Juan Valora, a fan trading with his girlfriend. “And if this was 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.”
For this tournament, Panini issued its largest collection yet, spurred by FIFA’s expansion from 32 to 48 teams. Each seven-sticker pack costs about $1.50 in Argentina and Uruguay. Many collectors, like Matías Inglesi, a software developer and father of nine-year-old Lucas, bypass the trading by buying boxes of 104 packs for $180. “It’s a way to avoid spending extra money to finally complete it,” he told the AP. He spends around $20 a week on the hobby and helps his son paste stickers into an album.
Child psychologist Agustina Zerbinatti says the activity offers more than fun, sharpening fine motor skills and teaching “from geography, knowing which languages are spoken in each country, number sequencing and notions of cardinality and ordinality.”
The tradition is so deeply felt that, as one collector noted, some children view finishing the album as even more precious than a World Cup victory. The Panini era, which has defined World Cup sticker books for generations, will conclude after the 2030 tournament, when Fanatics takes over as FIFA’s exclusive sticker partner. For now, the analog ritual endures in plazas across the continent.