FIFA launches 1st ever digital World Cup sticker book for Russia 2018

Iconic sticker giant Panini, together with FIFA, have launched their first ever official digital sticker album for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where football-mad fans can download sticker images online to complete their booklets.

First introduced for the 1970 Mexico tournament, collecting World Cup stickers of players, country emblems, and team photos of all 32 competing nations and compiling them in booklets has become a tradition for fans.

For the Russia 2018 tournament, Panini’s 13th edition, collectors for the first time ever will also be invited to download the 682 stickers through the Panini Digital Sticker Album app, through which they can swap duplicate stickers online.

The company launched the digital version on Wednesday with the hashtag #GotGotNeed, a phrase made famous by zealous sticker traders reviewing stickers missing from their own collection.

Booklets have already been dispatched to some of the 32 teams competing in Russia this summer, including World Cup first-timers Peru.

Official World Cup stickers will hit shops in the UK – where the pastime is equally popular among adults as well as children – on Thursday.

But British sticker fans have been left sore at the prospective price of packets of actual stickers, which will set you back 80p – just over USD$1 – per pack of five. Fans have begun tweeting the company in a bid to get them to lower the prices.

Alongside the stickers, Panini also launched Adrenalyn XL trading cards, which feature 468 stickers with graphics of the tournament’s top players.