The FIFA world cup has established itself as history’s most iconic single-sport athletic event since its official inception in 1930. Since then, this spectacle has grown into the beloved quadrennial competition we know it to be today. Aside from the footballing aspect, what makes the World Cup special is the host country, or countries that are able to flex, show off, and share their unique culture to the rest of the world. And when showing off that culture, the branding and logo design are the first line of defense—the first thing the entire world will see as it is plastered across media on billboards, promos, throughout the socials, when they search World Cup on the internet, and everywhere else. And when you drop an absolute stinker like this, the whole world notices. 

The logo they have spit out is juvenile at best, lazy, underwhelming when compared to the logos of the past world cups and honestly insulting. This logo looks like the result of someone who spent 10 minutes messing around in Adobe Illustrator, no Microsoft Paint. It looks like someone used clip art and threw a sticker of the World Cup overtop some bubble letter font. It looks like the design team blew off this project for months and then slapped some garbage together 10 minutes before the deadline. It is hard to believe this made it past peer critique, pitch presentations, client reviews, and far enough to be publicly released to the world, where of course it has been met with seething backlash. 

The past world cups have seen some really creative logos. This time around they took creativity and chucked it out the window, settling on a final product that is static, uninteresting, dull, flat, unfinished, and overall just really cheap. We’ve seen what can be done in the past, and this World Cup deserve the same level of care and attention to detail those others received. 

This isn’t the first time a bad design has been presented to the world, only to be met with significant pushback. The design for the Sonic movie was changed and greatly improved after they took it back to the drawing board. Many football club rebrands have been fixed after fan protest as well. There is no reason why FIFA can’t take this one back to the drawing board and give us something better than the garbage they’ve dropped.   

Every signature is a step closer to better 2026 FIFA World Cup branding.