Can design lift the World Cup?

The Fifa World Cup is now the most-watched sporting event globally, with over five billion people tuning in to the last edition in Qatar. But in a fractured geopolitical environment, does the tournament’s brand design take on heightened importance? David Benady investigates.

Every World Cup leaves a legacy, an overarching sentiment that captures the excitement, stand-out moments, values and emotions of the tournament.

So, what will be the spirit of World Cup 2026? A tournament where global conflicts are overcome or one where they are magnified? Where humanity is united or divided? A tale of hubristic overreach by a sports governing body or of its success in taming one of the world’s greatest egos?

All of that remains to be seen, but creating a positive, memorable spirit for World Cup 2026 is one of the main aims for the visual identity, designs and logos that will define the event’s brand language.

But creating branding for World Cup 2026 must rate as one of the trickiest global briefs around. How do you make a tournament feel coherent when it spans three host nations (the US, Canada and Mexico), 16 host cities and a record 48 teams?

Officially, the brand is meant to celebrate diversity and unity with a design language that can stretch across cities, cultures and even future tournaments.

But Fifa’s logo, a photo-real image of the iconic World Cup Trophy slapped in the middle of a stylised “26” figure, has divided critics, with some finding it clumsy and unattractive, while others praise its flexibility and power to cut through a sprawling melange of values.

“The idea behind the logo was modern but many in the design community found it surprisingly flat,” says James Kirkham, founder and CEO of marketing agency Iconic. “Fifa called it bold and iconic, but a lot of designers and fans found it too generic and strangely joyless compared with previous tournament marks,” he adds.

The design’s strengths

Alongside the logo, Fifa has commissioned an overall tournament poster and has asked each of the 16 host cities to create their own designs expressing their culture and spirit.

These designs have received a more positive reaction. “The host city posters have bundles of personality and warmth and look like things someone might actually want on a wall, which is always a good test in football culture and fandom: can this be an artefact, whacked in a frame, kept forever in your lounge or bedroom?” says Kirkham.

For the tournament poster, a collage of contributions from artists across each of the host countries composes a central image of a football player, uniting the contours of the three nations. Canadian artist Carson Ting, Mexican illustrator Minerva GM and the US’s Hank Willis Thomas combined their talents and styles to design the piece. Fifa president Gianni Infantino says the poster “captures the energy, diversity and sheer passion that will define the most inclusive edition of the tournament in history.”

The poster is packed with references to the national cultures of the three countries. The Canadian region of the poster has blue jays on a snowboard – a reference to a local bird and the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team – a Canada goose wearing a Mounties hat and a grizzly bear with headphones. “I like to keep things whimsical,” says Carson Ting, who designed the Canadian portion of the poster.

“First and foremost, the poster represents unity and diversity, a celebration of humanity through the love of football. It was empowering to know that we were able to push out a message that's very positive, and it's about unification, celebrating diversity and putting our differences aside to come together for the love of sport,” he says.

US artist Hank Willis Thomas frequently takes the flags of different countries and dissects and reappropriates them as a collage. Ting says his contribution to the poster “stems from his previous work where he likes to remix popular culture. And he's done exactly that here. At first glance, it looks like just stripes and stars, but there's much more. The closer you look at it, the more you see.”

The use of subtle references is true for many of the poster designs, which include what are known as ‘Easter eggs’ – hidden messages from the illustrators. For instance, in the tournament poster, Ting has included a watch pointing to 11 o’clock, to denote that designers often work right up to the eleventh hour to complete their work.

The power of localisation

The 16 host cities – 11 in the USA, three in Mexico and two in Canada – have all unveiled their own individual posters, which express their local culture and footballing spirit and will be displayed in their stadia – sometimes in very large formats – and around the host cities to publicise the tournament.

The illustrated designs could find their way onto merchandise such as T-shirts, mugs, scarves and tickets. Some of these posters have caught the eye of other designers, with the New York City and New Jersey design and Dallas posters praised for their quality.

Another host city with a powerful, iconic poster is Toronto, where local artist and sports illustrator Dave Murray was commissioned to create the artwork. He says the final poster design draws on his interest in cubism, art deco and futurism to convey motion and design.

“I'm interested in these art styles because they're able to impart dynamism and add this action and kinetic quality even to static items while keeping the design looking sophisticated,” he says.

Murray was inspired in his work by two historical World Cup posters in particular, Munich 1974 and Italy 1934, as well as others which have featured a heroic footballer. Focusing on a single iconic figure avoids crowding out the poster and diluting the message.

“We have a gigantic footballer, running across the landscape, about to strike the ball. We get this moment of action that's a second before something momentous happens.”

And he adds that it has been heartening to see major sports embrace creativity and become more inclusive.

“You can only gain things from opening up to different forms of expression and allowing non-traditional creativity into the world. It adds so much more colour and flavour to sport,” he says.

Over in Mexico, the three host city posters for Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterey were all created by Mexican designer Mario Cortes, who goes by the artistic name Cuemanche.

These were ranked among the best of the World Cup 2026 host city posters by the New York Times for how well they capture the local essence, incorporating for instance the Angel of Independence and many aspects of local culture.

Host city Mexico City has a strong legacy to live up to. The city’s 1968 Olympics logo, created by American designer Lance Wyman working with Eduardo Terrazas, is considered among the greatest sports branding designs of all time. Elements of the classic design were used in the lettering for the Mexico 1970 World Cup branding. But Cuemanche has not referenced these in his designs, instead focusing very much on the spirit and culture of the cities, with references to their features and the feelings they evoke.

Getting noticed

While it is tempting to hark back to glories past when it comes to World Cup designs, in the modern, over-branded world, sporting events must fight for attention like never before.

Simon Hill, president of FutureBrand North America, based in New York, says contemporary branding for the World Cup and the New York/New Jersey host city strategy needs to be dynamic, bold, vibrant and big. “That’s what you need to really stand out in a very crowded marketplace and in a crowded city where you've got so much jockeying for attention and position,” he says. He feels that few New Yorkers have really noticed the World Cup during the build-up, as they have focused on their favoured sports of American football, baseball and basketball.

He adds that for any major sporting event, the storytelling unfolds long after the launch of the logo. “You look at every Olympic Games, the logo comes out and it's panned, and then you see the storytelling, and how the storytelling comes to life in the venues in the city and it makes so much more sense.”

Hill worked at McCann (then known as McCann Erickson), the agency for the London 2012 Olympics, and saw the challenges of delivering a logo.

“When you launch the logo, you've got to tell the story behind it. And I think that's where Fifa perhaps fell short. Historically, Olympic and Paralympic Games have also fallen short in this area.” Hopefully the story of the 2026 logo will become apparent as the tournament unfolds and it is put to work in a wide array of situations.

Among the greatest logos from World Cups past are USA 94, South Africa 2010 and Brazil 1950. But each of these were focused on a single host nation, making a powerful iconic image easier to conjure. And those logos were largely used in static forms, a world away from today’s modular designs which need to be adaptable for use in motion graphics and multiple digital platforms.

Dividing opinion

This is why some believe the World Cup 2026 logo is an effective design for the tournament. Tom Bourke, creative director at Saffron Brand Consultants, says, "For a World Cup, you need language that replicates across space – from a repeat wall to citywide OOH, to pitch side hoardings, from broadcast graphics to the back of tickets. All of this has to also work alongside the trophy (or its form) and the Fifa wordmark.” He says the logo works well at this level. “It feels more crafted and a bit fresher than anything before it,” he adds.

However, Abbi Chard, design director at creative agency Cummins & Partners, says that while the 26 logo’s branding comes across with a clear intention to be flexible, inclusive and built for scale “in doing so, it raises a bigger question – has it stripped away too much of what makes the World Cup feel like the World Cup?”

She says the identity feels “curiously detached” from football itself. “The game is emotional, historic and culturally rich, but the mark is static and simple. It represents the tournament but not the spirit of the sport. Where past World Cup identities captured a sense of movement, place and personality, this one leans into neutrality. It doesn’t offend but it doesn’t create much interest either.”

But Daniel Binns, global CEO of Elmwood, also reacts positively. “The trophy outline recognises that it needs nothing else to communicate the scale of the event,” he says. “It is a system built for consistency and flexibility, even if it doesn't immediately dazzle,” he adds.

He doubts the World Cup will be a unifying national moment in the US similar to the Super Bowl or World Series, but it will boost soccer’s popularity. “This World Cup won’t convert every NFL fan overnight, but it lands in the most fertile ground football has ever found in America and that changes what is possible,” he says.

These discussions will be useful fodder for designing the next World Cup logo for 2030, when the competition will be shared across Morocco, Spain and Portugal, as well as three special centenary matches hosted in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

2026 is a turning point for a bigger, more diverse and fragmented World Cup. In 2030, the designs will need to be even more fluid as the tournament spans three continents: Europe, Africa and South America. Designs for 2030 will need to celebrate the past while signalling a larger, more expansive future for the world’s biggest sporting event.