Argentine plazas buzz with World Cup sticker trading fever

A woman sits at a fast food restaurant with her collectible stickers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup soccer album in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — With just under a month until the FIFA World Cup kicks off, thousands of people are filling Argentine plazas strategizing to win a different game that has become a beloved part of the quadrennial competition: collecting and trading stickers to complete the official World Cup stickerbook.

For more than half a century, Panini stickerbooks have been a treasured part of the World Cup experience, with schools, plazas and even offices becoming zones to barter for coveted rare stickers and duplicates laid out ready to be discarded.

In South America, swapping stickers is even more important than simply collecting them, with WhatsApp groups, apps and websites popping up to facilitate the trades.

On Sunday, throngs of people gathered in the heart of Buenos Aires exchanging multicolored decks of stickers with the faces of some of the world’s most famous soccer players, some doling them out on a table like a dealer in a poker game.

Children cradle books where they carefully paste the stickers.

“This connects you with the world. Everyone does it,” said Juan Valora, a fan who was collecting stickers 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.”

Panini launched its largest sticker collection ever for this World Cup, coinciding with the increase in participating countries from 32 to 48. Each pack contains seven stickers, and the price in both Argentina and Uruguay is around US$1.50. The legendary stickerbooks, which can sell online for thousands of dollars, will come to an end after the 2030 World Cup when Fanatics takes over as FIFA’s exclusive sticker partner.

Some sticker collectors now avoid trading by buying boxes of up to 104 sticker packs for $180, payable in installments, and bundled packages with albums. Even the so-called “rare” stickers, like those of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Kylian Mbappé, are available.

“It’s a way to avoid spending extra money to finally complete it,” said Matías Inglesi, a software developer and father of nine-year-old Lucas, who spends about $20 a week on the hobby.

For many children, completing the album is an even more cherished goal than their national team winning the World Cup, and parents, eager to please them, take over to help them meet their goal.

Child psychologist Agustina Zerbinatti says that more than just a fun challenge, the activity helps children develop fine motor skills and learn, “from geography, knowing which languages are spoken in each country, number sequencing and notions of cardinality and ordinality.”

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Ramiro Barreiro, The Associated Press