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Mia Nurmamat

On a Monday morning, Li Hangyan hurried through the doors of her shop, just as she does every day. Lately, however, the pace of work has picked up as a growing stream of customers arrives with questions about orders ahead of the 2026 Fifa World Cup.
In Yiwu, a city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province about 300km (186 miles) from Shanghai and home to the world’s largest wholesale market for small commodities, foreign buyers from across the globe are once again gathering to source goods.
At Li’s shop in the Yiwu International Trade Market – the world’s largest wholesale complex for small goods – shelves spill over with World Cup merchandise, from officially licensed souvenirs to rows of brightly coloured kits.
Among them, keychains of goats dressed in Argentina jerseys catch the eye – a playful nod to global football superstar Lionel Messi and the GOAT acronym, meaning “greatest of all time” – as do pillows with Messi’s image.
Li first turned her attention to World Cup merchandise after seeing the profits generated during the 2018 tournament in Russia and began exporting related products during the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
“In fact, a lot of us here started preparing and taking orders for the 2026 World Cup as early as the middle of last year,” she said. “From what I’ve seen, sales are pretty strong – definitely higher than the last tournament.”
She added that tariffs and geopolitical tensions have had little impact so far, partly due to relatively favourable tariff policies for sports goods exports.
The bigger challenge, she said, was capacity. “Orders are coming in much faster than factories can keep up with. With more teams this time, we’ve had to expand our product range and sales are up about 20 per cent from last month.”
The surge in demand comes as the 2026 World Cup – to be jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19 – approaches. It will be the first tournament hosted by three countries, and the first to feature 48 teams, up from 32.


According to the World Trade Organization, the tournament is expected to generate around US$80 billion in global economic output, including about US$30.5 billion in GDP contributions to the US. Merchants in China, thousands of kilometres away, are also benefiting.
A global hub for sports goods, Yiwu captures an estimated 70 per cent of the market share for World Cup merchandise, according to previous figures from the Yiwu Sports Goods Association.
The city is often seen as a barometer of global demand, with shifts in its order books offering early signals of change in trade and consumption. From its origins as a nexus for rural bartering, Yiwu has evolved into a major global trading centre.
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly highlighted the “Yiwu model” as an example of how small-scale private trade can grow into a global marketplace, encouraging other regions to adopt similar market-driven, grass-roots-led approaches.
Even as tariffs between Beijing and Washington escalated last year, the city’s exports still rose 24.1 per cent, year on year, to about 730.7 billion yuan (US$100 billion), according to Yiwu Customs.
In the first quarter of this year, exports of sports goods and equipment from Yiwu reached 2.83 billion yuan, up 12 per cent, year on year, customs data showed.
Helen He, another merchant in the same market selling World Cup jerseys, figurines, plush toys and bracelets, said demand had remained resilient.
“Sales in Europe and Latin America have been pretty steady since last year. We did lose some customers because of the Middle East conflict, but that was quickly made up by buyers from Central Asia, including Uzbekistan,” she said, adding that the impact from the Iran war on overall demand had been limited.
“Orders have been better than we expected this year. In April alone, they were up about 25 per cent,” she said. “We’ve got workers running two or three shifts now just to keep up, but demand is already beyond what we can handle.”
Last year, the city’s exports of sports goods and equipment exceeded 10 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 11.65 billion yuan – up 20.3 per cent, year on year – driven by strong demand related to this year’s tournament.


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Yiwu, the world’s capital of small goods, tackles global market for football-related merchandise as buzz builds ahead of major tournament


Yiwu, the world’s capital of small goods, tackles global market for football-related merchandise as buzz builds ahead of major tournament.


How this Chinese city is netting profits amid World Cup fever

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Yiwu, the world’s capital of small goods, tackles global market for football-related merchandise as buzz builds ahead of major tournament

Yiwu, the world’s capital of small goods, tackles global market for football-related merchandise as buzz builds ahead of major tournament