With the FIFA World Cup 2026 well underway in Canada, Mexico and the US, you might have noticed that this year's tournament looks quite different from previous editions. As well as the structural differences like the so-called hydration breaks and, still to come, the half-time show during the final, the World Cup branding looks sleeker and more polished than ever.
There's the World Cup 2026 logo, which introduces a new standardised design approach that FIFA intends to use as the basis for a permanent brand identity, mirroring the move we've seen in the Super Bowls logos in the US in an effort to create a more consistently recognisable brand from one tournament to the next.
Another big part of the identity for this year's tournament is the typography design. A bespoke ultra-condensed typeface has been designed for maximum impact across a wide range of applications. But is the World Cup font a winner, or does it miss the goal? (also see our pick of the best World Cup 2026 kit designs and the best World Cup 2026 adverts).
The custom World Cup font is FWC26, which is credited to Alistair McCready at the type foundry Monolith. It's a striking typeface that gives the tournament a consistent identity with a vibrant and contemporary edge rather than an overly institutional feel.
The typeface forms part of a broader identity that FIFA calls “One For All”, reflecting the three-nation hosting arrangement, and it feels neutral enough to fulfill that aim while still exuding a lot of personality.
The heavy, tightly-packed letters formed with clean geometric shapes allows big words to be crammed into small spaces, from jerseys to signage, while making a big enough impact to command attention at a distance and cut through the noise in huge stadiums for millions of television viewers.
But does the World Cup font work for every use? some designers have a quibble with the choice of type in some applications and argue that FIFA needs a variant to make it work.
Oliver Schöndorfer, a typography consultant and UI designer from Austria, suggests the font makes it hard to read match stats and labels when viewed at small sizes or on low-resolution screens.
The main bone of contention is how it looks on the scoreboard in the top left corner of broadcasts. Oliver notes that in this use, the font is combined with Open Sans, which is used for the timer and the scores, while FIFA retains its custom typeface for the country abbreviations.
"Obviously, someone found out that it would have been too challenging on a TV screen," Oliver suggests, but he feels that the combination of two fonts doesn't entirely solve the problem. The letters can look tight and squarish, with their inner shapes tending to disappear, making the forms harder to distinguish from one another, he says.
"Tricodes for countries are not always that obvious (I learned that RSA stands for South Africa)," he notes. "Flags next to it help, but not everyone knows them either. Plus, this will be seen on a variety of screens and resolutions, so it should be as legible as possible."
How could it have been done differently? On his Pimp My Type blog, Oliver shows how it could have been worse if FIFA had stuck with FWC26 for the entire scoreboard design, with zeros and eights becoming too hard to tell apart, He thinks the ideal solution would have been to create a wider, less bold variant of FWC26 that would make it more legible at small sizes without having to resort to losing its character by using an alternative.
"It’s not that I don’t like the FIFA typeface, I think it’s a good choice for branding, but there should be a companion version for smaller sizes," Oliver says.
The Instagram post below shows the scoreboard compared to those from previous World Cup tournaments.
What do you think of the World Cup typeface and how the scoreboard design compares with previous ones? Can you think of a better solution?
