How Coca-Cola Is Approaching the FIFA World Cup From Multiple Angles
Coca-Cola's latest World Cup activity spans fashion, artificial intelligence and traditional storytelling, revealing how one of football's longest-serving sponsors is approaching the tournament.
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Written by David Skilling
Coca-Cola has been sponsoring the World Cup for almost fifty years, and some of its current activations for the 2026 tournament look as if they were created by different generations from that period.
One is focused on nostalgia, leveraging the current demand for football fashion in a collaboration with adidas Originals; another uses artificial intelligence to create daily debates between two versions of the legendary football manager José Mourinho. And the third returns to the traditional storytelling that has defined Coca-Cola advertising for decades.
Together, they paint an interesting picture of how one of the world’s biggest sports sponsors is approaching football’s biggest tournament.
For most of its World Cup history, Coca-Cola’s role was spent defining what major sports sponsorship looked like: television commercials, stadium visibility, fan experiences, and emotionally driven campaigns became familiar parts of the sporting landscape. Long before social media existed, Coca-Cola understood that sports’ biggest moments were ultimately about people, memories and shared experiences. That philosophy remains today.
Looking at Coca-Cola’s recent World Cup activity, the company has created multiple ways for people to engage with the tournament.
The adidas Originals collaboration is perhaps the most culturally driven example.
The collection reunites two brands whose World Cup association stretches back to 2002, drawing inspiration from archival designs and early-2000s aesthetics. Footwear, apparel and accessories sit at the centre of the release, while the accompanying campaign follows a cast led by Lamine Yamal as they make their way towards the tournament.
The project feels intentionally nostalgic. Not nostalgic in the sense of recreating the past, but in the way it borrows from memories and repackages them for a new generation. Several pieces reference iconic Coca-Cola packaging, while others blend advertising imagery from different eras into entirely new designs. That’s an increasingly common formula across the wider industry, where football culture regularly extends into design, style and identity.
The José Mourinho project sits somewhere else on the spectrum.
Developed alongside Footballco and entertainment studio GRAiL, and using Google Cloud, “José vs. Mourinho” uses an AI-powered digital twin of Mourinho to create daily debates between two versions of the manager. The concept embraces football’s emotional contradictions, allowing Mourinho to effectively argue against himself throughout the tournament.
It’s built around technology, social behaviour and daily interaction. More than 200 pieces of content are expected to be distributed throughout the competition, creating a constant stream of football conversation designed specifically for platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
What’s particularly notable is that Coca-Cola isn’t using technology for technology’s sake. The AI element grabs attention, but Mourinho’s personality, humour and competitiveness sit at the heart of the concept because those are the qualities supporters already connect with.
Then there is Coca-Cola’s traditional big-event style ad series, the brand has been rolling out, including the film below, “No Better Feeling”. If the adidas project represents culture and the Mourinho series represents innovation, these films represent continuity with Coca-Cola’s timeline of sports event sponsorship.
The campaign focuses on the emotional experiences that have long defined both football and Coca-Cola’s marketing. It feels like classic Coca-Cola, and that’s what makes it interesting. Rather than replacing traditional storytelling, the company is building new ideas around it.
Each activation that I’ve highlighted serves a different purpose. None of them is trying to achieve the same thing, yet all contribute to the same objective of making Coca-Cola part of the World Cup experience.
This tournament will bring together more teams, matches, host cities and content than any previous edition. For sponsors, the challenge is finding meaningful ways to remain present across an event that generates countless stories, conversations and cultural moments. Coca-Cola’s answer appears to be variety.
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