A full sticker album for only 20 francs? Panini inflation on Swiss schoolyards
25.6.2026
Translation: Eva Francis
Pictures: Michael Restin
With a total of 980 stickers costing hundreds of francs, the 2026 World Cup Panini Album is the largest and most expensive of all time. Most children won’t get very far with their pocket money. But with the help of generous parents, the sticker swapping madness is thriving.
We’re not joining that madness, I thought when I saw the latest Panini sticker album. It’s almost as thick as the mail-order catalogues from my childhood. Overkill, if you ask me. The biggest sticker album for the biggest World Cup in history is way beyond any kid’s pocket money budget. So I was really glad that my son, who’s in the fifth grade, didn’t ask for one. Even when the sticker album arrived as a gift, I stayed calm. And so did he. No pleading, no begging – buying loads of stickers to fill the enormous empty album didn’t come up once.
Then the tournament began and I read headline after headline in Swiss news outlets: Panini stickers are driving record sales, we didn’t expect this level of demand, Panini is running out of stickers, to name but a few. I looked into the numbers on our shop and found the same trend: the Panini sticker demand on Galaxus has risen sharply compared to the previous World Cup. People are sticker shopping like there’s no tomorrow.
And there’s no other way if you’re keen to fill your album. It’s an all or nothing kind of situation – and most people are all in. In a «shut up and take my money» way. How much is that costing them? Well, let’s ask science. Whenever there’s a collecting craze, science reliably steps in, turning the question of cost into a stochastic calculation, as in this calculation by University of Applied Sciences in Vienna.
According to this model calculation, the total costs for a complete album are exorbitant. For the most naive solo collector, assuming a price of 1.50 euros per pack, they amount to about 1,568 euros; in a swapping group of ten people, it’s still 658 euros per person, and even with selective additional purchases, it’s a hefty 439 euros.
What’s the United Edition?
In francs, that would be…a lot, too. And of course, there’s yet another «exclusive special edition» for Switzerland, which is touted as being of higher quality. Oh no, it’s definitely not just a different colour scheme to prevent Swiss people from getting bargains in the EU. Ironically, this special edition is called United Edition.
I thought all this would make it more expensive and unaffordable for my son to fill his album, but I hadn’t factored in Zurich schoolyards. «My album’s almost full now,» I hear my son say during the first week of the tournament. Of course I got worried and asked how much he’d spent. His reply? About 20 francs.
And no, he didn’t steal any. Instead, he got them all from school friends, as collecting and swapping stickers had become a heavily subsidised group project. «Many parents bought 100-packet boxes, so the others just gave me their duplicates.» Sharing is caring, right? And there will be a lot of sharing opportunities when many parents kick off their kid’s sticker collection by buying boxes of 100 packets, resulting in 700 or even 1,400 stickers in one go.
So the fact that things are working out for Panini and the kids is mainly thanks to the grown-ups. Since these sticker albums have been around since 1970, collecting stickers has become such a nostalgic experience that, in many cases, filling an entire album has turned into a family project.
Numbers on Galaxus show that most current Panini buyers are in the age group of parents: about 40 per cent are between the ages of 40 and 49 – and some of them may have been collecting since 1986, when Maradona stole the show at the World Cup in Mexico. I can totally relate to my colleague David Lee’s story about the World Cup and his Panini album.
The few photos from back then have become lasting memories. Meanwhile, people are buying, opening and sticking footballers’ portraits by the dozens. I wasn’t up for that this year, even though the first sticker album I filled with my son will always be a fond memory. Five years ago, we learned a lot together while collecting Panini stickers – about countries, people and buying things at kiosks. This time, he didn’t need my help.
Covering up «Temu stickers»
Kids are taking their stacks of duplicates to school and giving them away quite generously. Why wouldn’t they, they’ve not spent any of their own money on them. When many parents invest two to three hundred francs on stickers, the swapping craze is on. All kids need is a tiny bit of pocket money and the right connections.
If you’re benefiting from other people’s duplicates, you can’t be picky. However, by now, even the «Temu stickers», as my son calls the light-blue ones from outside Switzerland, have all been covered up.
Even though I’m not part of the collecting community this year, I’m touched to see how determined many adults are when it comes to filling their kid’s album. The other day at the football pitch, for example, parents gathered in the shade at half-time to compare notes. Not on the game, but on the stickers they were still missing. There was a lot of swapping and smiling going on. That’s nice to see, especially because the harder the search is, the greater the joy if you do come across that rare missing one.
The battle for the last missing stickers
The study linked above explains the growing enthusiasm for hunting down missing stickers – which I’ve also noticed in my son and his friends – as a combination of anticipated loss aversion and the endowment effect. In other words, if you’re focused on reaching the goal of having a full album, gaps are painful and missing stickers feel much more valuable than they actually are.
Children searching for the last few stickers at a swap event share this experience. They come home upset because an adult who has the one they’ve been longing for simply wouldn’t give it up. And they complain that they were pressured by older kids (or grown-ups) who wouldn’t take no for an answer when they wanted to have one of their stickers. Isn’t it funny what a Panini album does to people?
Panini’s fears of loss
According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, the Panini Group is expecting to generate more than 1.2 billion euros in revenue from World Cup stickers and trading cards. And yet, they’re not happy. Why? Well, it’s precisely because business is booming the way it is that this long-established company is being forced out of the market. The competition is taking over.
FIFA has decided to work with US market leader Fanatics from 2034 onwards (link in German). Fanatics also own Topps and already holds the UEFA rights. And although their debut with stickers for the 2024 European Championship was viewed with scepticism, it ended up being a commercial success. The collecting, swapping and sticking continues – even though nostalgic adults, in particular, would have been happy to do without this particular change.
Michael Restin
Senior Editor
Michael.Restin@digitecgalaxus.chSimple writer and dad of two who likes to be on the move, wading through everyday family life. Juggling several balls, I'll occasionally drop one. It could be a ball, or a remark. Or both.
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