For a diehard soccer fan, owning a literal piece of the action from an iconic game is the ultimate souvenir. FIFA’s newest merchandise lets World Cup devotees do just that—but it comes with an eyebrow-raising price tag.
Pieces of the pitch from the upcoming World Cup Final are for sale, starting at $450. The small sections of grass will be encased in acrylic resin and inscribed with details of the game, including the location, date, participating teams, and final scores. With the match scheduled for this Sunday, July 19 at New York New Jersey Stadium and the final two teams yet to be determined, the keepsakes are currently only available for pre-order, shipping to buyers after the World Cup is over.
The price of the pitch
The “Piece of the Final Pitch” collection comes in four distinct tiers, each bigger in scale (and more expensive) than the last. There’s the basic Foundation Edition for $450, which includes a 2.5-inch acrylic cube containing a piece of the turf, to be extracted after the final match is played. It also comes with a USB containing an “authenticity film” and is packaged in a hinged box. The Foundation Edition was initially for sale on FIFA’s online store, but it’s currently only available via the collectible manufacturer KeepStub.
At double the price, the Stadium Edition goes for $900 and throws in a metal souvenir ticket etched in gold, a signed certificate of authenticity, and a much larger double-doored box (though the acrylic centerpiece is still just 2.5 inches wide). The Legacy Edition hikes its price even higher to $1,200, adding a miniature gold replica of the ball to be used in the World Cup Final and a box “adorned with storytelling,” meaning blurbs about the 2026 World Cup are written on the inside. Again, the actual piece of the pitch doesn’t increase in scale.
Finally, there’s the Hero Edition, going for a whopping $3,000. It adds a crystal-cut glass World Cup Trophy and a larger wooden box, along with—finally—a bigger chunk of the pitch. In this edition, the cube is three inches wide instead of 2.5.
Each edition has a limited supply, with only a thematic 2,026 units of each up for sale. If every edition sold out, they’d add up to more than $11.2 million in revenue.
World Cup fans facing ever higher prices
The collectibles’ high prices quickly caught flak on social media. “As if paying 6k for a ticket hadn’t been enough,” one commenter wrote in response to the merchandise.
Indeed, the merch prices are only the latest example of uncharacteristically high prices for the 2026 World Cup. This year’s tournament was the first to feature dynamic ticket pricing: Top-tier tickets to the final match, initially priced at $6,730 in September of 2025 (an already much higher figure than the most expensive tickets at Qatar’s 2022 World Cup), jumped in price to $10,990 by April. In May, FIFA released even pricier tickets to sit in the front row, on sale for $32,970 a pop.
The public outrage over the World Cup’s pricing was enough to garner probes by the attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, California, and Texas.
“New Yorkers have been waiting years for the World Cup to come to their backyard, and they deserve a fair shot at affordable tickets,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “No one should be manipulated into paying sky-high prices for seats, and fans should be able to trust that the tickets they purchase will be the ones they receive.”
