This story is part of our week-long editorial series on how major retailers, fashion conglomerates, beauty brands and CPG startups are leveraging this year’s biggest-ever FIFA World Cup to their advantage.Major sportswear brands are using the World Cup to link new products to football memories. That includes Nike, with its Cryoshot sneaker inspired by the Mercurial R9 boot Ronaldo wore at the 1998 World Cup, as well as Adidas, with its “Backyard Legends” campaign, Trionda official match ball and Predator cleats. As the tournament arrives in North America, that same nostalgia play is showing up across fashion collections, from archive football jerseys to World Cup-inspired capsules built around national colors and fan dressing.
According to a new Bank of America Global Research report, the 2026 World Cup is set to be the biggest to date, with 75% of the world expected to engage with the event in some way. The tournament, running from June 11 to July 19, will include a record 104 games across the United States, Canada and Mexico. For fashion brands, that creates a reason to tap into football’s archive of old kits, national colors, cult boots, memories of tournament summers and fan dressing from decades past.
