What's behind the mania for World Cup stickers in Argentina?
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Updated / Wednesday, 17 Jun 2026 14:31
A woman sells Panini World Cup sticker albums on Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires. Photo: Catriel Gallucci Bordoni/NurPhoto
David Conlon
By David Conlon
Maynooth University
More from<br>Maynooth University
Analysis: Sticker-collecting in Argentina generates widespread, large-scale gatherings in public parks and city squares as fans meet up to swap stickers
For soccer nostalgists of a certain age, Panini's World Cup sticker albums hold a special significance. In the UK and Ireland, sticker-collecting was an essential component of fandom in the 1980s and 1990s. Though one might reasonably expect the practice to have faded with the advent of the digital age, it has instead proven to be remarkably robust and has even exploded in popularity in some parts of the world over the past decade.
In Argentina, in particular, the release of the Panini World Cup album now generates near-religious levels of excitement, and holds a powerful place in the public imagination. Fans of all ages form queues at sweet shops and other vendors to buy packets of figuritas (football player stickers) in pursuit of the most coveted icons such as Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappé.
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From RTÉ News in 2014, the enduring mania for World Cup sticker collecting
But what is especially interesting about sticker-collecting in Argentina is how the practice has started to generate widespread, large-scale gatherings in public parks and city squares. Here, collectors engage in ad hoc exchanges with strangers, offloading their duplicate stickers and picking up valuable missing pieces. Reflecting the tournament's expansion to 48 teams, the 2026 edition features 980 individual stickers, meaning that filling the album through conventional means alone is statistically more difficult.
The Parque Rivadavia in Buenos Aires’ Caballito district, historically the site of a large open-air market for collectors of books, records and comics, has now become a popular location for these mass meet-ups between young and old. Commenting on the phenomenon in Argentine newspaper Página 12, Hernán Panessi lauds sticker-collecting as 'an excuse for real-life interactions where the barriers between the generations melt away.’
From AP, Argentina's government has joined the dispute between shop owners and the local manufacturers of popular but scarce Qatar 2022 World Cup sticker albums
Indeed, reports from parents suggest that phone-addicted Argentine kids are spending unprecedented stretches of time away from their devices as they engage in in-person sticker swapping. Nevertheless, the country's sticker-collecting mania is at least in part driven by the internet, with meetups and swaps often organised via WhatsApp groups or online forums.
Bizarrely, internet virality recently led to the sticker featuring New Zealand defender Tim Payne becoming one of the most talked-about, after an Argentine influencer called Valen Scarsini noted that Payne had the lowest Instagram follower count of any player at the World Cup, and encouraged his own fanbase to show their support. To the evident bemusement of Payne, his Instagram numbers shot up from just under 5,000 to over five million in the space of a week.
'Reports from parents suggest that phone-addicted Argentine kids are spending unprecedented stretches of time away from their devices as they engage in in-person sticker swapping'. Photo: Patricio Murphy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
In advance of the 2022 World Cup, demand for stickers in Argentina was such that acute shortages generated national and international headlines and even became an affair of state. The shortages (allegedly exacerbated by changes to how stickers were distributed) resulted in widespread disquiet, and eventually prompted the Argentine government to...