Sialkot, Pakistan, may not be a household name, but soccer fans know it well: Pakistan’s 11th-most populous city is known as the soccer ball capital of the world. Its 1,000 factories and 60,000 workers produce about 70 percent of the world’s hand-stitched soccer balls. That includes the Trionda, the official soccer ball of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. That’s the soccer ball you and millions of eyes around the world will follow this summer — It followed the same overseas journey to get to the beautiful game as the soccer ball sitting in your garage.
Getting thousands of them from Sialkot to stadiums across North America requires a team sport: manufacturers, truck drivers, ship crew, dockworkers, train conductors. And this summer with the region hosting multiple final round games and the final itself, there’s no bigger player than the Port of New York and New Jersey.
The official match ball for the 2026 tournament is the Trionda — tri for the three nations sharing a World Cup for the first time, onda the Spanish word for wave, a nod to the ball's flowing four-panel design. The panels carry the national colors of each host: red for Canada, blue for the United States, green for Mexico, converging at the center in a triangle. (....)