FIFA has confirmed that President Donald Trump will hand the World Cup trophy to the winning captain at the 2026 final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The move breaks from traditional protocol, where the FIFA president typically does the honors, and places a sitting US president at the center of the world’s most-watched sporting event.
FIFA’s blockchain play is its most ambitious yet
Kraken was named the Official Crypto Exchange Supporter of the tournament on June 9, 2026. That’s not a logo-on-a-banner deal. It’s a full partnership that puts one of the largest US-based exchanges in front of an audience that will number in the billions across broadcast and digital platforms.
Then there’s Avalanche. FIFA migrated its blockchain infrastructure away from Algorand and onto Avalanche to power FIFA Collect, the organization’s digital collectibles platform. FIFA Collect lets fans buy and trade officially licensed digital memorabilia, and running it on Avalanche’s faster, cheaper network is a clear signal that FIFA wants the platform to handle serious volume during the tournament.
Chainlink rounds out the trifecta. The oracle network is providing the infrastructure for FIFA’s first official prediction markets during the World Cup. Think of it as the plumbing that connects real-world match results to on-chain contracts, letting fans place verifiable predictions on outcomes without relying on a centralized intermediary to report scores.
