The FIFA World Cup Trophy: Who Made It, What It's Worth, and Why Winners Don't Keep It

What the trophy actually is

	Specification
Designer	Silvio Gazzaniga (Italy)
First awarded	1974 World Cup, West Germany
Height	36.8 cm
Weight	6.175 kg
Material	18-carat gold, hollow
Base	Two bands of malachite
Ownership	Permanently FIFA’s — never the winner’s

Gazzaniga’s brief to himself was to catch a single instant. “To create something symbolising exertion, dynamism and the jubilation of an athlete in the moment of victory,” as he described it. The result is two stylised human figures rising out of the base with their arms lifting a globe — the lines spiral upward rather than standing still, which is why the object reads as motion rather than as a cup.

It is not, strictly, a cup at all. There is nothing to drink from and nothing to fill.

Why winners hand it back

The original does leave FIFA’s custody once every cycle, on the pre-tournament World Cup Trophy Tour — which comes with its own strict rules about who may touch it.

This is the single most common misunderstanding about the World Cup, and it is a direct consequence of what happened to the last trophy.

The original Jules Rimet Trophy — named after the FIFA president who drove the tournament into existence — was awarded from 1930. Under the rules of the era, any nation winning three World Cups would keep it outright. Brazil won their third in 1970, and took it home permanently.

That left FIFA with a tournament and no trophy. So the replacement was written differently: the current trophy always remains FIFA’s property, no matter how many times a country wins.

Football was not the first to learn this. Golf made the identical mistake a century earlier, and the Claret Jug exists for the same reason — one of several patterns visible across the oldest sports trophies in the world. The winners lift it, parade it, and give it back. What they keep is a gold-plated replica, the FIFA World Cup Winner’s Trophy, which their national association owns permanently.

Every image you have seen of a squad with the World Cup in a hotel or a parade after the tournament is, in all likelihood, the replica.

The competition that produced it

FIFA did not commission Gazzaniga directly. It ran an open design competition for the 1974 tournament and received 53 submissions from sculptors in seven countries.

That number is worth pausing on. The most recognisable object in world sport was chosen from a shortlist, by committee, against 52 alternatives that no one now remembers.

Is it solid gold?

No — and the weight gives it away.

The trophy is 18-carat gold, but it is hollow, a fact its original manufacturer has since confirmed. At 36.8cm tall, a solid gold sculpture of that volume would weigh several times 6.175kg. The figure that is often quoted as proof of extravagance is actually the proof of hollowness.

Gold purity and solidity are separate claims, and headlines routinely collapse them. 18-carat means 75% gold by mass in the material used; it says nothing about what is inside.

Where the winners’ names are hidden

Until 1994 the trophy carried no list of champions at all. After that tournament, FIFA added a plate to the bottom of the trophy — so the engraved roll of winners is not visible when the trophy is standing upright. You have to turn it over.

The inscriptions follow one small, elegant convention: the year in figures, then the winning nation in its own language. So the entry for 1974 reads Deutschland, not Germany, and 1970 reads Brasil, not Brazil. The plate was remade after the 2018 World Cup, which corrected an earlier engraving error.

A note on capacity. It is very widely claimed that the base holds exactly 17 plaques and will run out in 2038. We could not trace that figure to FIFA or any primary source, so it is not stated as fact here. It may well be true; it is simply not something we can verify, and our research and sourcing policy says an untraceable number gets left out rather than repeated.

The trophy that was stolen twice

The Jules Rimet Trophy had a far more eventful life than its successor.

1966, London. Four months before England hosted the World Cup, the trophy was stolen while on public display at Westminster Central Hall. It was recovered a week later by a mongrel collie called Pickles, who found it wrapped in newspaper beneath a hedge in south London. Pickles received a silver medal from the National Canine Defence League, a year’s supply of dog food, and an invitation to England’s victory banquet.

1983, Rio de Janeiro. On 19 December, thieves forced the wooden back of its display cabinet with a crowbar and took it. It has never been recovered, and is widely believed to have been melted down.

One fragment survives. The trophy’s original base — separated from the cup decades earlier — sat unrecognised in a basement at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters until it was identified in 2015.

Two trophies, compared

	Jules Rimet Trophy	FIFA World Cup Trophy
Awarded	1930–1970	1974–
Designer	Abel Lafleur (France)	Silvio Gazzaniga (Italy)
Material	Gold-plated sterling silver	18-carat gold, hollow
Base	Lapis lazuli	Malachite
Kept by winner?	Yes, after three wins	Never
Fate	Stolen 1983, never found	In FIFA’s possession

The design brief changed as much as the metal did. Lafleur’s trophy was a figure of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, holding a vessel — a classical monument, static and ceremonial. Gazzaniga’s is two anonymous athletes in mid-lift. The first commemorated victory; the second tries to be the moment of it.

Why this trophy looks like nothing else

Most sporting trophies are cups, and cups are drinking vessels made ceremonial — the shape descends directly from the medieval practice of awarding a valuable cup as a prize.

Gazzaniga abandoned that lineage completely. There is no bowl, no handles, no lid. What replaced it is a piece of figurative sculpture that happens to be given to footballers, and that is why it photographs so unlike the trophies of other sports.

The oldest prize tradition of all had no cup either. Winners at the ancient Olympic Games received a wreath of olive leaves — and there was no second place to award anything to.

If you want the rules of the game it is awarded for, start with the offside rule — the one law that shapes how the sport is actually played.