Our geography lessons did not stop when the World Cup ended. One million people found our World Cup activities this summer, and we have loved sharing them around the world. We powered through them all season long, tracking the matches, calculating the leaderboard, and sharpening our geography skills for all 48 countries. Now that the tournament is over, we are still finding ways to keep the boys learning and having fun with it. The latest is the free FIFA Panini Collection album, which we did not even know existed until recently, and it is not too late to join in since it runs through September 30, 2026.
The free World Cup printables that started all of this
These are the activities we released during the World Cup, and they sure did go viral. If you still want to use them to learn about the tournament and the 48 participating countries, sign up below and they are yours for free today.
- Flag Worksheet Pack: 48 country flags in black and white, and in color. Let your kids color, cut, quiz, or just have fun.
- Country Explorer Worksheet: Pick any team and turn it into a geography and culture lesson. Reusable template, just one page for any country.
- Flag Bracket for the Knockout Round: The matches are already played, so use this one to recreate the madness by cutting and gluing flags for all 32 knockout round teams.
- Continent Guide to all 48 Countries: Match each country’s name and flag to the map of its continent so kids actually understand where in the world to find them.
The free World Cup sticker album your kids can collect online
How to get it, with or without a phone
I had rejected the Panini app this summer because my boys do not have smartphones and I do not love handing mine over, despite them asking every single time they saw a Panini advertisement. What changed is that my oldest son is 10 and has a Chromebook he learned to use at school. It is usually reserved for typing practice and school projects, but we decided to let the boys have the album on it too.
There are three ways in, and the browser version is the one most families with younger kids will want:
- In a browser at paninicollection.fifa.com/launch, which works on a laptop, a Chromebook, or a school device.
- On iPhone or iPad through the App Store.
- On Android through Google Play.
You also do not have to create an account at all. There is a guest option that lets your kids start collecting straight away with no registration. The tradeoff is a much slower pace: one pack to start, one free pack a day, and one swap request instead of three. If you want to try it before committing to an account, that is the way to do it.
If you do register, the album links to a FIFA.com account, and FIFA passes along some of that account information to Panini, including the email address, country, and nickname attached to it. That is worth knowing before you sign a child up, and it is part of why we set our boys up the way we did.
A note on setting up a kid-safe device
If you do not yet know how to set up a device using Google’s Family Link, I highly recommend it. It starts with getting your kid their own email address, registering them as a minor, and listing yourself as the parent through your own Gmail account. Once you use the child’s email address to log in to a device, it recognizes that they are a minor and prompts you for approval before they can access websites or apps. The Family Link app on the parent’s phone is what you use to control, monitor, and approve any requests.
How the free packs work
Once the account is set up, you log in every day and collect two free packs. From there you go through the album and stick the players in, and you can page through the whole collection as it fills.
A registered account gives you three packs to start, two free packs every day, the ability to open up to four packs a day, and three swap requests at a time. There are challenges to take part in, promo codes floating around that unlock extra packs, and an option to form a collectors team. Panini notes that some of this varies depending on which country you are in, so your mileage may differ from ours here in Germany.
There are plenty of other ways to earn or buy virtual packs, and we skip nearly all of them. Our boys get about ten minutes a day on a shared account, which lands after they have done their twenty minutes of reading before bed. We have only been collecting for about two weeks and they already have a quarter of the album full, so the free packs alone move things along faster than I expected.
The features my boys actually love
The trading is the first one. They start by setting a goal for which cards they want most, which began as a random assortment of favorite players and quickly turned into collecting whole teams. Any card they do not want, or any double they end up with, goes into the swap system, and they trade with collectors anywhere in the world.
The historic cards are the second, and this is the one that gets the whole family looking over their shoulders. If a player has appeared in a past World Cup, you can click his current card in the album and pull up the older ones. We all age, and it turns out famous footballers do too. The boys click through players like Mbappé or Kane to see what haircut they had last time around, and it is entertaining for all of us.
What to know before your kids swap with strangers
Swapping happens between collectors anywhere in the world, and that sentence tends to stop parents mid-scroll, so here is how it works in practice. Trades go through structured swap requests rather than open messaging, and a registered account can hold three of them at a time. If you would rather your kids not trade outside the family at all, the collectors team option lets them set up a group and swap back and forth with each other instead, which is what I would suggest for younger children.
What happens after September 30
Panini’s own guidance is to complete your album before September 30, 2026, and beyond that they have not said what happens. It is not clear whether the album stays viewable afterwards, whether trading and pack drops simply switch off, or whether the whole thing closes down.
We’re viewing this as a fun activity for the next month without any bigger commitment (and without paying for any virtual packs).
Where our geography goes next
We love tracking football tournaments and rosters to get our geography fix, and the leagues carry us straight through the winter. This season we are following the Bundesliga and the Premier League, which is turning into its own geography lesson now that our home state of Saarland finally has a team in the top flight again. We will be building activities along the way.
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