Panini stickers for the 2026 World Cup are selling better in Switzerland than ever before. Retailers and manufacturers are unanimously reporting record demand. But part of the boom is home-made.
03.06.2026, 20:03
03.06.2026, 20:04
SDA
Because world football's governing body FIFA has expanded the tournament to 48 teams instead of 32 for the first time, the collection this time includes 980 stickers - 44% more than the 682 for the 2022 World Cup. Those who want to fill the album are buying more.
Migros, Coop, Lidl, Denner and Valora all reported to the news agency AWP that sales clearly exceeded those of the 2022 World Cup and the 2024 European Championships. Panini itself also speaks of "exceptionally high demand" after just 20 days of sales.
However, the Italians themselves put the comparison into perspective: This time, the start of sales was deliberately set later and closer to the start of the World Cup, which also pushed up the sales speed. Coop also points out that the packs now contain seven stickers instead of five - which also increases throughput.
Boxes for parents, packets for children
When it comes to the buyer profile, the retailers paint a uniform picture: the majority of shoppers at the checkout are adults. According to Coop, the 100-pack boxes - the best-selling item at Migros - are "generally bought by adults", while the individual packets tend to be bought by younger people.
Lidl speaks of buyers "who want to make their children happy or fill the album together as a family". Valora confirms the picture: interest runs through all age groups, from children and teenagers to adults.
Panini is also observing a growing segment: young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are "particularly active" - a generation that grew up with the tournaments of the 2000s and 2010s.
From the playground to the internet
Those who trade today no longer do so in the playground - at least not mainly. Marc Jenzer's company Semabit operates bildertausch.ch, one of Switzerland's largest exchange platforms for Panini stickers, and has several thousand active players at any one time for the 2026 World Cup.
Around 50,000 users are registered, with around 100 new users joining every day. By the end of the World Cup, Jetzer estimates that over 100,000 transactions will have taken place on the platform for the current album - several million pictures will have changed hands. "We have more traffic than ever before in this phase," says Jenzer.
The picture painted by the dealers is also reflected online: around two thirds of users are male, with the 1970s and 1980s being the most strongly represented age groups. For this generation, the school playground as a swap shop is a thing of the past - they swap online, sometimes together with their own child.
The fact that the album has become significantly thicker with 980 stickers does not seem to deter the collectors: "We don't notice anything in the community," says Jenzer.
An era comes to an end
Yet this is one of the last major Panini World Cups. US trading card manufacturer Topps had already snatched the rights to the 2024 European Championship from the traditional Italian company - and Panini will also lose the official license rights for the World Cup sticker album after the 2030 World Cup.
For Jenzer, this is a loss that goes beyond the commercial aspect. After all, Switzerland was the first country outside of Italy to be supplied with the "Bildli". "A nostalgic era is coming to an end. People have always collected 'Panini pictures', not 'Topps pictures'."
