Inside the city making 70 percent of the world’s footballs – where the World Cup ball has been stitched for the last 44 years.
The official balls for every tournament since 1982 have been made in Sialkot, Pakistan, and many are stitched by hand.
More than 100 years ago, locals in Sialkot started repairing balls as a hobby, and now around 40 million balls are exported from the country each year.
The colors and logos are applied by hand, and workers closely inspect the finished product.
The craft takes months to master and skilled stitchers can complete roughly four balls a day.
According to Forward Sports, who produced the World Cup ball this year for Adidas called the Trionda, 2026 is the largest ball quantity they have made in their history.
The World Cup kicks off on June 11, and the ball will be kicked across Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Stefan Bohrer, who photographed the process of the balls being made, spoke to Talk to the Press: “The sheer scale of football production in Sialkot is astonishing. Knowing that around 300,000 balls leave these factories every day makes you pause and wonder where they all end up.
“Yet football is a truly global language. These balls will be kicked, shared, and celebrated by millions of people around the world, carrying with them the passion of the game and the craftsmanship of the people who make them.”
“Standing there, watching this enormous production process, I realized that each ball is destined for a different story somewhere in the world – from a dusty street pitch to the next World Cup Champions.”
Sialkot makes hundreds of thousands of footballs every day.
Forward Sports first made a World Cup ball in 2014 for Brazil and it now has a separate research side of the company for match balls.
Making the World Cup ball is even more regulated, with a new match ball taking three to four years to make.
Thermo-technology is often used to ensure no water can get in and that its weight remains constant no matter the weather conditions.
The football’s roundness, colors and preciseness of its seams must be perfect, especially to fit FIFA’s standards.
Factories also contain cages where the footballs can be tested by firing them against a wall over and over again.
Typically, official match balls account for only a small part of production in Sialkot, and most balls which are made are used as training balls.
During a World Cup, Sialkot receives high demand from both sports brands for footballs and other businesses such as McDonald’s who print balls with their logo on.
Yet the city fears Chinese manufacturers who could rapidly produce cheap copies of their balls and implement high security at their factories.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
