2026 FIFA World Cup Logo

[Krz]

Honestly, I really like pretty much everything. The font is unique, presentation is modern and memorable, and I think the city specific elements will develop more overtime. I’m glad one of those concept logos that crammed elements of all 3 countries into a trophy shape wasn’t chosen, but we still get to highlight the sites. I hope more cities end up looking like LA than Houston. The one problem is the logo clip art, I’ll be interested to see how they apply it.

[Brave-Bird 08]

39 minutes ago, Krz said:

Honestly, I really like pretty much everything. The font is unique, presentation is modern and memorable, and I think the city specific elements will develop more overtime. I’m glad one of those concept logos that crammed elements of all 3 countries into a trophy shape wasn’t chosen, but we still get to highlight the sites. I hope more cities end up looking like LA than Houston. The one problem is the logo clip art, I’ll be interested to see how they apply it.

 

No instance of applying the clip art is worth interest. 

 

There is also nothing memorable about each city being assigned a color scheme. Atlanta's is blue and green? Like, meh, okay. Means nothing to me. 

 

I've already seen usage of the blob lettering where I literally cannot tell what it says. 

 

Entire thing is a disaster

[Brave-Bird 08]

14 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

 

 

See, this is phenomenal. It's still a shift in direction from what we have gotten in the past, but it's actually applicable, scalable as a concept and refined. 

 

We got the sketch-on-napkin version of this, which is just so pathetic.

[BrySmalls]

The whole 2026 logo identity/package is a slap in the face for the most prestigious event in the sport.

The design is even worse than the 2012 Summer Olympics logos, which were a laughingstock!

[IceCap]

No matter how rock stupid a design is you can always count on a few people to defend it 

[Sykotyk]

1 hour ago, BrySmalls said:

The whole 2026 logo identity/package is a slap in the face for the most prestigious event in the sport.

The design is even worse than the 2012 Summer Olympics logos, which were a laughingstock!

At least that had the redeeming quality of looking like Lisa Simpson playing her saxophone. 

[MJWalker45]

2 hours ago, Krz said:

Honestly, I really like pretty much everything. The font is unique, presentation is modern and memorable, and I think the city specific elements will develop more overtime. I’m glad one of those concept logos that crammed elements of all 3 countries into a trophy shape wasn’t chosen, but we still get to highlight the sites. I hope more cities end up looking like LA than Houston. The one problem is the logo clip art, I’ll be interested to see how they apply it.

This is the only "not horrible" thing I can point out of all of this. It's unique, but it still doesn't match placing the actual trophy over top of the numbers. 

[FinsUp1214]

One thing I still haven’t seen in the branding package is a wordmark akin to “Russia 2018”, “Qatar 2022”, etc. Is there a “United 2026” one floating around somewhere that I’m missing? That would especially be needed for television scorebugs:

 

 

I can’t imagine “FOX | primary 26 logo” in the top right corner is going to work that well on screen. It’s going to be too small a scale for the logo. They’ve got to have some sort of alternative option.

 

Also, it’s bugging me that the host cities have multiple color schemes rather than unique ones, and that some are overlapping (Philadelphia and Boston both have a yellow/blue/green option, for example). I think I’ve seen navy/powder blue/red for two different cities and keep mixing up who they’re even for. Kansas City and Houston, I think? 
 

This whole thing’s just weird. 

[Brave-Bird 08]

Don't underestimate the gaudiness of scorebugs, especially if we are going to be seeing this on FOX. FOX already has a full side-to-side banner for college basketball that is the most unnecessarily busy scorebug I have ever seen, and we still have 3 years before kickoff. Who knows how annoying scorebugs and just overall screen overlays during sports broadcasts will be by then? (for example, I can just see live betting lines and what not taking up a side bar or something)

[MJWalker45]

2 hours ago, Brave-Bird 08 said:

Don't underestimate the gaudiness of scorebugs, especially if we are going to be seeing this on FOX. FOX already has a full side-to-side banner for college basketball that is the most unnecessarily busy scorebug I have ever seen, and we still have 3 years before kickoff. Who knows how annoying scorebugs and just overall screen overlays during sports broadcasts will be by then? (for example, I can just see live betting lines and what not taking up a side bar or something)

 

2 hours ago, FinsUp1214 said:

One thing I still haven’t seen in the branding package is a wordmark akin to “Russia 2018”, “Qatar 2022”, etc. Is there a “United 2026” one floating around somewhere that I’m missing? That would especially be needed for television scorebugs:

 

 

I can’t imagine “FOX | primary 26 logo” in the top right corner is going to work that well on screen. It’s going to be too small a scale for the logo. They’ve got to have some sort of alternative option.

FIFA controls the display much better than the NFL and other North American leagues do, but I'd just expect Fox to use some version of the patch font that's slimmer, and much, much cleaner than what is being shown now. 

[raysox]

Here is the roll out of the city specific branding + motion package. Still not defending the literal PNG but this is super bold. 

 

[FinsUp1214]

16 minutes ago, raysox said:

Here is the roll out of the city specific branding + motion package. Still not defending the literal PNG but this is super bold. 

 

I’ll fully admit that there’s some really cool stuff there, some of which I think is especially promising (that orbit pattern for Houston and 8-bit stuff for San Francisco is pretty awesome, actually. Hadn’t seen either of those yet). That being said, I think the fact that there was some good effort put into the city stuff while the main logo is left plain honestly upsets me a little more. It goes to show the main logo could’ve had a really cool pattern or design placed into it if they really wanted.
 

I get it - the intention I’m sure was for the main logo to “be the template” or whatever. But it still could have been that with some sort of RGB color scheme or pattern integrated within it. I don’t think it would’ve caused any disconnect to make that extra effort: in fact, I think it would have driven home what they were trying to do more with such a design. If they had run with something like that alongside what this video shows together on the same night instead, I would’ve been a little warmer towards this and understood what they were trying to do a little clearer. Rolling out the blank primary first and waiting to roll out the city stuff until the day(s) after didn’t allow for that context to be presented and recieved, and that chasm - among other mistakes - really hurt this.

 

So yeah, there is some good stuff here, but not quite enough to redeem the poor overall execution of the logo and brand as a whole.

[LMU]

[TenaciousG]

The city-specific logos are a good idea. But the drab black-and-white primary is so sad. There was a really good opportunity to blend the common features of each country’s identities: all have the color red in the flag, all the flags are striped. You have the eagle in Mexico to the bald eagle in the US to the Maple leaf in Canada; there are a lot of good features you could draw from. But nah, just do a big fat 26 with a picture of the World Cup that looks like it was cut out of a newspaper. 

[MJWalker45]

https://www.footyheadlines.com/2023/05/vibrant-2026-world-cup-logo-variants.html

[VampyrRabbit]

6 hours ago, Krz said:

Honestly, I really like pretty much everything. The font is unique, presentation is modern and memorable, and I think the city specific elements will develop more overtime.

We've seen the first city specific elements for the first time, and they are just different colorways.

[Krz]

1 hour ago, VampyrRabbit said:

We've seen the first city specific elements for the first time, and they are just different colorways.

Footy headlines lol, I’m talking about what raysox sent. The wave for LA, the star for Dallas, the sunburst in Miami. If it was just the logo in different colors I’d be disappointed but each city has a whole identity within the logo now.

[VampyrRabbit]

24 minutes ago, Krz said:

Footy headlines lol, I’m talking about what raysox sent. The wave for LA, the star for Dallas, the sunburst in Miami. If it was just the logo in different colors I’d be disappointed but each city has a whole identity within the logo now.

Problem is that identity is in that s*** logo with the JPEG of the World Cup, and for most it just amounts to pretty much a new colourway because only a small shot of those animations are in it, and those small snapshots they aren't all that distinct for most of them. So it is more or less just a different colourway for the logos.

But the bigger problem is that those colourways are in that logo, which is like having a bitesized portion of a nice dish served out of a potty training bowl.

[andregunts]

13 hours ago, raysox said:

Here is the roll out of the city specific branding + motion package. Still not defending the literal PNG but this is super bold. 

 

Whatever that was I loved it. 
 

didn’t I tell you guys to be a little patient

[FinsUp1214]

When you’re rolling out a major brand like this, you can’t afford to ask your audience to “be patient” or assume they will be. An initial brand rollout has to provide and present the context for what this is all about. Does this mean you have to release absolutely everything? No. But you have to release enough to provide the “why.” FIFA didn’t do that and spaced it all out too far, which allowed for the underwhelming logo to take all the attention and get daggered before the rest of the brand even came out. They were basically asking for it.
 

We didn’t see any this city stuff until the day (or days) after the logo itself was released. We got the plain logo and a bunch of colors, but we never saw anything akin to this the night of. We never saw the intended “modularity” of the logo and how that was going to be accomplished. That led to some people (myself being one of them) waiting for colors and patterns or something to fill the logo in, and being a bit jilted when it never happened. Had they released the logo with the video above together on the same night? Different story. I think that context would’ve helped it out a little bit and provided more of a “why.” It wouldn’t save it for me personally - the logo is still pretty flawed between the png trophy and the lack of its own colors or patterns - but it would have more clearly defined what the intention behind the logo and brand was.

 

So no, “patience” didn’t fix this, for me at least. The rollout strategy’s intentional delays between stages was a major flaw that led to lost context. The logo is still very underwhelming, lifeless, and I’m genuinely concerned about how well it’s going to function in various uses. Even the city branding, as great as a lot of it is, still presents a fair bit of confusion in its own right with multiple color schemes per city and overlapping between a few that’s already caused some confusion for me. 

All in all, the city branding made the whole thing a bit more palatable, yes. But even still, it did nothing to take away or fix the other flaws the brand has in my opinion. The good and the bad co-exist and neither are cancelling each other out.