The world is once again gripped by football fever as the FIFA World Cup 2026™ captivates fans across the globe. Official merchandise is everywhere, but the SanDisk USB-C Flash Drive FIFA World Cup 2026™ stands out as a licensed collectible that is equal parts stylish, whimsical and useful long after the final whistle has blown.
No doubt there have already been plenty of tears shed, with plenty more still to come. One thing we can say with some certainty: there should be no Salt Bae awkwardly hoisting the trophy this time around.
Design and First Impressions: World Cup Style Meets Practical Storage
The SanDisk USB-C Flash Drive FIFA World Cup 2026™ comes in the shape of a referee’s whistle, with a soccer ball embossed on either side of the air chamber.
It comes in two different variants, with the same technical specifications – USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 class and up to 300 MB/sec performance:
- Gold Edition (Metal enclosure)
- Global Edition (Black)
- USA Edition (Blue)
- Canada Edition (Red)
- Mexico Edition (Green)
The motif on the Gold Edition is a very stylised 26. The port cap itself has a print of the World Cup trophy and FIFA26.
The Global Edition features “26” in a multi-colour palette. Whereas the three respective host nations feature designs and colourway inspired by USA, Canada and Mexico respectively.
All the variants come with a wearable FIFA lanyard.
Performance and Everyday Use: Faster Than Expected
It’s a USB drive … and I am sure that needs no operating instructions.
I have both the Gold and Global editions here.
I ran the drives through CrystalDisk Mark 9.0.3 for some speed test.
Interestingly the initial test gave some very ordinary results. Diving deeper into why, for some reason the flash drive only connected at HighSpeed (480 Mbit/sec) rather than SuperSpeed (5 Gbps).
Flipping the drive over and reconnecting it fixed that problem. So did putting it back in on the original rotation. I must have got something in the port that affected the initial connection.
Sandisk has published that the drive supports up to 300 MB/s, and over numerous tests from 1 GiB, 4 GiB and 8 GiB, I am consistently getting over 400 MB/s in sequential read speed. Sequential testing measures the performance when transferring large, continuous files such as videos, photo libraries or backups.
Random read of small files more typical of daily usage is substantially lower, but not a surprise.
Write performance is respectable, but not earth shattering.
Sequential write of large files is around the 145 MB/s mark. Random write is just north of 3 Mb/s.
Should You Buy the SanDisk USB-C Flash Drive FIFA World Cup 2026™?
The SANDISK® Official Licensed Product Collection for the FIFA World Cup 2026™ is available in Australia at Officeworks.
There’s no escaping the fact that these drives carry a premium price. Compared to mainstream USB-C flash drives with similar capacities and performance, the FIFA World Cup 2026™ editions are positioned as collectible merchandise as much as they are storage devices.
On the other hand, what price do you put on a little happiness, especially if it carries you all the way to World Cup 2030? Unlike most tournament merchandise, this is one souvenir you’ll still be using years after the final whistle.
The SANDISK® USB-C™ Flash Drive FIFA World Cup 2026™ Edition is available in 64GB | MSRP A$69.00 and 128GB | MSRP A$99.00
The SANDISK® USB-C Flash Drive FIFA World Cup 2026™ Gold Edition is available in 128GB | MSRP A$119
DRN would like to thank Sandisk for providing the review units.
