The FIFA World Cup 2026 is ending this week, and England and Argentina’s fates for the final match are to be decided this very day.

There have been many limited edition product releases for fans to enjoy throughout this football season, with Coca-Cola’s country cans, Pepsi’s thermochromic cans, Budweiser’s country cans and aluminium bottles, and the Coors Light Tallerboy, to name but a few in metal packaging. It certainly goes to show that nothing unites brands and their consumers better than a global sporting event. Many of these products are not just collectibles, but have featured QR codes to competitions and virtual experiences, bringing the games and players even closer to fans.

The hydration breaks for players during the World Cup matches in the US have been a controversial addition to the games this year, lasting around three minutes each. This has perhaps driven even more beverage sales, with fans using this time as their own hydration break too (particularly after FIFA’s decision to ban people from bringing hard, reusable bottles into the arenas – though plastic ones were allowed). Watching the England vs Norway game at a friend’s flat in London on Saturday, our group certainly used the hydration break as an excuse to all ‘cheers’ with our Jubel and Budweiser cans.

It will be interesting to hear after Sunday’s final if there have been any official counts of how many cans have been sold at official venues across the tournament. An article by Jinyi Packaging in May stated that total stadium attendance was projected to exceed 3.5 million, which means that if an attendee purchased a “conservative five packaging items per person, that is 17.5 million individual packaging units consumed inside stadiums across the tournament.”

Outside of the US stadiums, Recycle Now and Every Can Counts predicted that two million cans were set to be consumed over the course of the tournament in the UK, so if there’s a follow-up to that, we’ll be sure to inform you too!

It’s going to be a nail-biting match tonight. I will of course be supporting England, but whatever happens, we can be proud of how far the team has come, as well as how much the ‘summer of soccer/football’ and metal-packaged products have united countries all over the world.

Alex Rivers (she/her), CanTech International editor
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