This project was originally shared on 18 May 2023. (press space - this is a slideshow) The '26 World Cup is now pretty much underway and this logo is meh. 3 years ago, FIFA unveiled this, an unprecedented logo for an unprecedented tournament. A stylized 26, the trophy and the FIFA logo. That's it. FIFA thinks the World Cup is an iconic and recognizable tournament that... well, little to no text would make it speak for itself. 3 years on and that statement aged like milk. This logo nowadays is now accompanied by a wordmark that explicitly said "World Cup 2026", proving just imagery doesn't help anything, even at a small scale. If you can't make out the "26" from far, you're doing something wrong. Look, admittedly we wanted something different from the stylized trophies look, in early 2023, I made a logo taking inspiration from that year's Women's World Cup logo. I wish I did the bottom part better, but it is better representative of this World Cup is about than the official logo. There's design lessons to take after this World Cup. If you want to make a logo for something as big as the World Cup, and I can't believe I had to say this, it has to be representative of what the tournament is about, and what it stands for. It should use a palette that's livelier and brand and host-friendly and not just black-white, and it should be recognizable at a small scale. If you need to draw the numerals, don't let it blur into chunky blocks when zooming out. People WILL associate this with 2026, I'm sure, but not because they see the "26" numeral, or the trophy, or the FIFA wordmark, but because they've accustomed to looking at it multiple times. And while the same applies to most World Cup logos, 2010 and 2014 is my favorite just because, future generations are going to see this as if the World Cup had a blander turn. That's not the direction you're going for. Lessons WILL be taken, I'm sure, hopefully for the better. 4.5/10. (Original desc.) The official tournament logo of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, now FIFA World Cup 26, was unveiled on good old Wednesday May 17 (a day prior to this project), and I can assure you that anyone expecting anything better was disappointed. Instead, just the trophy, the FIFA wordmark, the numeral 26 and that's it. For starters, this is the first time the solid gold rendering of the FIFA World Cup trophy was used. Many of us, including non-sports fans, have familiar with the iconic Silvio Gazzaniga trophy that symbolize the tournament almost 50 years ago. Every time FIFA put up an abstract shape that resembles the trophy, examples include 2002, 2014, 2018, and especially 2022, we almost think this is from a FIFA World Cup tournament. So this year, FIFA straight up used the actual form of the trophy. Also for starters, the numerals 2 and 6 looks a bit... blocky. This bucked the trend of designers used blocky abstract designs, like the visual identity of Paris 2024, or the Best awards from FIFA themselves, in fact, I even think that the logo is from the same designers as those who made for the Best awards! One important thing to note that although the FIFA wordmark is present, for the first time since 1990, the word "World Cup" was not present. they just think, again, the solid gold trophy and the numerals do the talking. Looking at this, it didn't really express the culture of the USA, Mexico and Canada altogether, that's because, FIFA wanted to express that only in the visual properties associated in it, that's why their visual identity features blue, red and green, correspond to one color of each host country's flag, and the host city logos the following day also reflects the culture of that city. Four months ago, I made a better looking logo as a concept for FIFA to follow, even if they don't. It nods to the past eight winners in World Cup history, while having the flat version of the trophy and culture expressed on the bottom two boxes that said the year and location, also red, green and blue. If you look at the bigger picture, you can see that it's similar to the Women's World Cup logo to be hosted this year, and comparing to the actual logo, you can see how great the official logo would have been. So verdict? We'll have to wait for three more years to see if it work well on stadiums, but for now, 4/10. ----------------------------------------------------- (c) FIFA, POCOG
