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Adidas has pulled back the curtain on redesigned trophies for the FIFA World Cup’s three marquee individual awards. The Golden Ball, Golden Boot, and Golden Glove, the prizes handed to the tournament’s best player, top goal-scorer, and best goalkeeper respectively, are getting a facelift ahead of the 2026 edition.
The 2026 tournament will be the first to feature 48 teams, spread across three host nations: Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
A sponsorship decades in the making
Adidas has been the brand behind these awards for longer than most fans realize. The company has sponsored the Golden Ball and Golden Boot since 1982, and the Golden Glove since 1994. That is over four decades of association with the World Cup’s most prestigious individual honors.
The Golden Boot was originally known as the Golden Shoe before Adidas rebranded it.
The trophy refresh is part of a broader push by Adidas around the 2026 tournament. The company also unveiled its “Road to Glory” boot pack in June 2026, which features the FIFA World Cup trophy on the heel for the first time.
The bigger picture: FIFA’s dual strategy
FIFA Collect, the organization’s digital collectibles platform, migrated to a new Avalanche-based FIFA Blockchain on June 11, 2025. The platform allows fans to collect and trade digital moments from FIFA competitions.
FIFA’s decision to build on Avalanche gives that ecosystem a real-world use case ahead of the 2026 tournament. FIFA is not running a pilot program — it built a dedicated blockchain and migrated its collectibles platform onto it a full year before the tournament kicks off.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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