June 2026. Football returns to where it had promised to become something more than a sport: a global language. The World Cup across the United States, Canada and Mexico is not only the largest tournament ever staged, but the symbol of an era in which everything moves faster, further, more connected. And so Undici also changes pitch. It becomes international and, for the first time, in English.
We do so today because it would not have made sense at any other moment. The 2026 World Cup is the exact point at which football turns into a shared, instantaneous, global culture. Players speak to billions of people before even touching the ball. Teams are global brands. Stories are born in Buenos Aires, grow in Milan and become shared heritage in Seoul or Los Angeles. Contemporary football no longer knows borders: we have decided to tell it in the same way.
When Undici was founded, it had a simple and radical ambition: to treat football with the same narrative dignity reserved for cinema, literature, fashion, music, lifestyles. In a word: culture, pop and beyond. To tell, therefore, not only matches, but what matches mean. Over these years we have discovered that football is a prism through which to read the present: power, identities, language, desire, cities, politics, technology.
Becoming international does not mean renouncing our identity. On the contrary: it means taking it elsewhere. Preserving the way we have told football so far — curious, elegant, lateral — while opening it up to new voices, new geographies, new imaginaries. It means speaking to those who see football not as a nostalgic refuge, but as one of the major cultural forces of our time.
The 2026 World Cup issue — which you can purchase in our online store — is the first step of that journey. Because the World Cups have always been much more than a tournament. They are a mirror of the world: of its tensions, its obsessions, its transformations. And today the world is international by definition. Fluid. Hybrid. Interconnected. Undici has always been so and from today it will be even more so. Not to chase global football. But to continue telling it in the best possible way.