Even before a ball has been kicked, there are signs that the 2026 World Cup will be a fashionable one. You’ve got Kendall Jenner attending the unveiling of the new-season kits, Nike planning World Cup collaborations with everyone from French fashion label Jacquemus to London streetwear giant Palace, and artful Spanish label Loewe is creating the Spanish team’s pre-game outfits.

But it’s in the footwear department where the biggest moves are being made. 

While everyone’s attention is focused on the tournament's kits being unveiled, some huge World Cup footwear collaborations have slipped under the radar. 

On April 4, during Arsenal’s 2-1 FA Cup loss at the hands of Championship side Southampton, Arsenal left back Myles Lewis-Skelly debuted the newest creation from adidas’ most coveted collaboration in recent times. Wales Bonner, after years of hairy Sambas and animal skin adidas classics, is extending its feral footwear selection to include Predator football boots (or soccer cleats, as the locals will be saying at the upcoming World Cup).

The colorway of the London label’s adidas Predators is almost identical to Wales Bonner’s SS24 adidas Sambas, foregrounding a snakeskin print with silver detailing, and the foldover tongue even features decorative stitching on the foldover tongue providing an old-school flavor to a very new-school boot.

It’s a classic Wales Bonner x adidas sneaker made in boot form for the World Cup.  And adidas isn’t stopping there.

Y-3 just reissued the adidas +F50 Tunit pack, initially created for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Twenty years later, its snarling animal artwork still makes for one of the wildest football boots in history. Although Nike is also staking its claim to that throne. 

The American sportswear giant has, according to unconfirmed samples, got American rapper Travis Scott producing scaly great Phantom 6 boots ahead of the World Cup. That is, by my reckoning, the most high-profile football boot collaboration in history. It’s certainly the most noteworthy musician x football boot crossover ever. 

Nike’s other leaked boots for the World Cup incorporate another of its biggest collaborators, as the Dutch streetwear giant Patta translates its red-hot Air Maxes into a wavy pair of Nike Mercurials. This is Nike catching up to New Balance, which released a slick pair of Stone Island football boots at the end of last year and Aimé Leon Dore founder Teddy Santis only just previewed an ALD x New Balance Furon boot on an Instagram Story.

It was strange that none of the 2026 World Cup kits included a collaboration with a local fashion designer, something that’s become commonplace in club football. These boots, however, are providing the fashion x football crossover that the kits haven’t. 

In this way, it feels like the World Cup is legitimizing last year’s BootsOnlySummer hype. I’d argue this really started when football boots transformed by cobblers into Vibram-soled shoes started going viral across social media which, I’d argue, is the reason why Nike T90 and adidas Predator returned as lifestyle shoes. 2025’s BootsOnlySummer was an online joke gone too far — young kids wearing football boots with jeans on the high street may have actually inspired Rosalía to style New Balance 442 PRO FG V2s beneath a billowing white skirt ahead of the Met Gala. 

But the joke would’ve hit so much harder this summer. This time around, the boots are so good you’d actually want to wear them off the pitch.

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