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.
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 intervene by attempting to mediate between wholesalers and vendors.
This year, headlines of a different sort were generated when Argentine artist Ariel Cuadra had the idea of creating an unofficial Panini-style sticker album to pay tribute to the human rights groups 'Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo' and ‘Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo’. Both organisations were formed during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship in response to the disappearance of their loved ones at the hands of the regime’s secret police.
The resulting artifact, ‘Madres y Abuelas’ (‘Mothers and Grandmothers’), is emblazoned with the words ‘Nunca Más’ (‘Never Again’) in a mock-Panini logo, and replaces footballers with the organisations’ key members, whose images can be downloaded as free PDFs and glued into the album by collectors.
Argentina is not the only Latin American country where World Cup sticker mania has taken hold. Public gatherings for sticker collectors to engage in informal trades have also taken off in other countries, including Mexico. In Chile, where the national side did not qualify for this year's tournament, the practice has reached unprecedented levels of popularity. In 2018, Peru’s qualification for the tournament for the first time since 1982 led to stocks running out within 10 days.
Indeed, throughout the region the enthusiasm generated by stickers is seemingly rivalled only by the World Cup itself. As Mark Biram and Tim Vickery note in their recently published history of the tournament in the region, the World Cup has a unique connection to Latin America, which provided the tournament's first host country and first champion (Uruguay in 1930), its most successful side (Pelé's 1958-70 Brazil), and arguably its single most mesmerising solo performance (Maradona in 1986).
Founded in Italy in 1961, Panini issued its first World Cup album in collaboration with FIFA for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, and a new one has followed every four years since. Sadly for collectors, the album that will accompany the 2030 World Cup (to be jointly hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain) is set to be the last. After that, FIFA’s contract with Panini comes to an end, and the release of World Cup-related stickers and collectibles will be licensed to rival company Fanatics.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ