Footballers making their first appearance at this summer’s FIFA World Cup 2026 will wear special debut patches on their match shirts. The initiative will include high-profile names such as Erling Haaland and Lamine Yamal, while every member of the Scotland national football team squad is also expected to receive one during the competition.
Footballers making their first appearance at this summer’s FIFA World Cup 2026 will wear special debut patches on their match shirts. The initiative will include high-profile names such as Erling Haaland and Lamine Yamal, while every member of the Scotland national football team squad is also expected to receive one during the competition.
The project forms part of a fresh licensing agreement that will see Fanatics take over from Panini as FIFA’s partner for stickers and trading cards from 2031 onward. Once a player completes his first World Cup match, the patch will be taken from the shirt and transformed into a special Topps collectable card.
Officials have not yet revealed the final appearance of the badge that players will wear during the tournament. However, the idea itself is not entirely new, as debut patches have already been used for several years in American sports and became part of Major League Soccer in 2024.
Although FIFA has not confirmed every detail for the 2026 finals, the process is likely to follow the same structure currently used in MLS, which also operates under a licensing arrangement with Fanatics. Before a player’s first tournament match, teams receive a supply of patches that are attached with adhesive to the upper-right section of the shirt.
After the game finishes, the badge is removed and transferred onto a one-of-a-kind trading card. The finished item is then delivered to Topps and inserted at random into Chrome MLS hobby boxes sold to collectors.
Those hobby boxes retail for approximately $120 (£88) and contain 21 packs with four cards in each pack. Two cards inside every complete box are signed autograph editions. Current MLS versions feature player autographs, though FIFA has not yet announced whether World Cup cards will follow the same format.
Because the Fanatics partnership does not officially begin until 2031, supporters will need to wait until after that year before the debut cards become commercially available. As a result, both the 2026 and 2030 tournaments are expected to create a substantial archive of collectable debut memorabilia.
This summer’s competition could generate more than 600 debut cards due to the large number of players expected to feature in their first World Cup matches. Several countries will also take part in the finals for the very first time.
The Cape Verde national football team, the Curaçao national football team, the Jordan national football team, and the Uzbekistan national football team are all preparing for debut appearances at the tournament.
Meanwhile, the Austria national football team, Czech Republic national football team, DR Congo national football team, Haiti national football team, Iraq national football team, New Zealand national football team, Norway national football team, Paraguay national football team, Scotland national football team, and Turkey national football team will return after lengthy absences from the global tournament.
Algeria's national football team, Bosnia and Herzegovina's national football team, and Ivory Coast's national football team are also back for the first time in 12 years, with most of their squads expected to consist of players making their World Cup debuts.
