The official match ball of the 2026 FIFA World Cup has been revealed by Adidas. It is called TRIONDA and is characterized by particular technology and a design that celebrates the nations that will host the World Cup next summer: the United States, Canada and Mexico. The name itself is a tribute to the itinerant nature of the tournament and the passion of the fans: “TRI” stands for i three countries hosts e “WAVE” evokes the “ola” that is created in the stadiums. The balloon, presented on October 2, is made up of four triangular panels that join in the center with a white background enriched with symbols and colors: blue and the star for the USA, red and the maple leaf for Canada and green and the eagle for Mexico.
Like all new generation balls, we remember the ball from the last European Championships, TRIONDA has a technological soul thanks to a chip mounted on the side with a 500Hz motion sensor which will help referees and VAR decisions such as handballs and offsides. The innovation is also in a mesh structure inside the ball which will guarantee the quality of performance at all altitudes and climatic conditions in the 16 stadiums which will host matches from Toronto to Mexico City.
The design of TRIONDA, the new ball for the 2026 World Cup
TRIONDA is the new ball presented by FIFA for the 2026 World Cup which will be played for the first time in 3 countries – United States, Canada and Mexico – from Thursday 11 June to Sunday 19 July. From the name to the design and colors it is all designed to represent the host nations and the sporting culture linked to the game of football. The name TRIONDA takes up the number of countries (“Tri”) and evokes the wave that can be seen in the stadium during the “wave” of the fans.
Like all soccer balls, TRIONDA also takes inspiration from Platonic solids, the simplest three-dimensional shapes that have all faces of the same size. For example, the Telstar of the ’70 World Cup was based on an icosahedron (20 triangular faces), while the Brazuca of the 2014 World Cup took inspiration from a cube. The TRIONDA is already a novelty in this sense: it is the ball with the lowest number of panels ever (four) for a World Cup. In fact, it is based on a tetrahedron – four triangular faces, four vertices and six edges – made spherical thanks to panels with curved edges that fit together and join together perfectly.
This union of shapes is also used to symbolize the cooperation between the host countries, also celebrated through the colors and icons on the surface:
- United States: the blue with a star on it
- Canada: red with a maple leaf
- Mexico: The green associated with the head of an eagle
The surface of the TRIONDA, adorned with gold finishes like the World Cup, has been designed with a system of raised lines, grooves and deep stitching to optimize aerodynamics, guaranteeing a perfect balance between stability in flight and air resistance.
The technology of the official match ball of the 2026 World Cup
The new 2026 World Cup ball has integrated Adidas’ Connected Ball technology, introduced in 2022 in Qatar in the Al Rihla ball, a sophisticated system to provide real-time information to the VAR, giving support and increasing the precision of refereeing decisions.
The chip is positioned laterally in the ball in a specially created layer, not suspended in the center as in the 2024 European Championship ball, and balanced by counterweights in the other panels. At the heart of the system is a 500Hz motion sensor (IMU) – it sends data 500 times per second – capable of tracking every movement and touch of the ball. This data will be used to make safe decisions for example on offsides and handballs.
The development of the TRIONDA ball, which lasted over 3 and a half years, followed a multi-level testing process to combine technology and performance. In laboratorythe use of robots allowed durability and aerodynamics to be tested at extreme speeds. On the fieldthe ball was tested in seven of the World Cup host cities to validate its performance in different climates and altitudes. The stadiums will be in 11 US cities (Los Angeles, New York, Kansas City, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, Miami), 2 Canadian (Vancouver and Toronto) and 3 Mexican (Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara). Finally, tests were carried out “blind test” with the players, to ensure that the internal technology was imperceptible to have a natural playing feel.
