The World Cup trophy that Spain lifted after beating Argentina 1-0 in the 2026 final is not the one Uruguay won in 1930. There have been two. The first, the Jules Rimet Trophy, was stolen twice: in London in 1966, when a dog found it a week later under a hedge, and in Rio de Janeiro in 1983, after which nobody saw it again. The second World Cup trophy has been in use since 1974. It is made of 18-carat gold, it is hollow, and the team that wins it hands it back to FIFA after the ceremony.
Below is the story of both cups: where they came from, what they are made of, the two thefts, and why the rule that let Brazil keep the first one was never applied to the second. The facts come from FIFA and Wikipedia. The two disagree on a few things, one of them surprising, and those are set out at the bottom.
| Jules Rimet Trophy | FIFA World Cup Trophy | |
|---|---|---|
| Awarded | 1930 to 1970 | Since 1974 |
| Designer | Abel Lafleur (France) | Silvio Gazzaniga (Italy) |
| Made of | Gold-plated sterling silver, lapis lazuli base | 18-carat gold, two malachite bands in the base |
| Height | 35 cm | 36.8 cm |
| Weight | 3.8 kg | 6.175 kg |
| Design | Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, holding up a ten-sided cup | Two figures holding up the Earth |
| First winner | Uruguay, 1930 | West Germany, 1974 |
| Where it is now | Stolen in Rio de Janeiro in 1983, never found | FIFA World Football Museum, Zurich |
Why there are two World Cup trophies
In 1930 Jules Rimet, the FIFA president who had pushed the competition through, laid down that the first country to win the cup three times would keep it. Brazil did it in Mexico in 1970, after their titles in 1958 and 1962, and the cup went to Rio de Janeiro for good. Pelé was in all three of those squads; his four tournaments are on our Pelé World Cup record page.
That left FIFA without a trophy for 1974, when West Germany were the hosts. It ran a competition and received 53 designs from sculptors in seven countries. The winner was Silvio Gazzaniga, an Italian artist: two figures rising in a spiral from the base and holding the Earth above their heads. West Germany were the first to win it, on home soil.
The three-wins rule did not come with it. FIFA’s own guide to the trophy points out that if it had, Germany would already own the cup, after 1974, 1990 and 2014. Argentina have since drawn level with three wins of their own, in 1978, 1986 and 2022. Nobody is taking this one home.
The Jules Rimet Trophy, 1930 to 1970
The first cup did not start out as the Jules Rimet Trophy. It was named Victory, and most people just called it the World Cup, or the Coupe du Monde. It took Rimet’s name in 1946. The French sculptor Abel Lafleur designed it: a winged figure of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, holding up a ten-sided cup, in gold-plated sterling silver on a base of lapis lazuli. It stood 35 cm high and weighed 3.8 kg, a little over half the weight of the trophy used today.
It crossed the Atlantic for the first tournament on the Conte Verde, which left Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice, in June 1930 with Rimet and the France, Romania and Belgium teams on board. Uruguay won it, and Rimet handed it to Raúl Jude, the president of the Uruguayan football association. The tournament itself is on our 1930 World Cup page.
Italy won it in 1934 and 1938, so it was in Italian hands through the Second World War. Ottorino Barassi, a FIFA vice-president who also ran the Italian federation, took it out of a bank in Rome and hid it in a shoe box under his bed so that the Nazis would not get it. In 1954 it was given a taller base, to make room for more winners’ names. And in 1958, in Sweden, Brazil’s captain Hilderaldo Bellini lifted it over his head because photographers were asking for a better view. Every winning captain has done the same since.
How the World Cup trophy was stolen in 1966
England were hosting the 1966 World Cup, and the Football Association received the trophy that January. In March it lent the cup to Stampex, a stamp exhibition run by Stanley Gibbons at Central Hall in Westminster, on condition that it was guarded at all times. It was insured for £30,000, ten times its official value of £3,000.
On Sunday 20 March, at about 12:10 pm, the guards found the display case forced open. The thief had come in through the back doors, taken the padlock off the back of the cabinet and left the way he came, walking past stamps worth £3 million. None of the guards saw or heard anything.
The next day Joe Mears, the chairman of the FA, got an anonymous phone call. Then came a parcel holding the removable lining from the top of the cup and a note demanding £15,000, with a threat to melt the trophy down if the police were told. Mears told the police anyway. Detective Inspector Charles Buggy of the Flying Squad posed as his assistant, took a suitcase of paper with real banknotes only at the top and bottom, and met a man calling himself Jackson at Battersea Park. On the way to the trophy, Jackson spotted a police van following them, jumped out of the car in Kennington and was caught in a garden.
Jackson was Edward Betchley, a petty thief and used-car dealer. He said a man he knew only as “The Pole” had offered him £500 to act as a go-between. He was convicted of demanding money with menaces and got two years. Nobody else was ever convicted. In 2018 the crime journalist Tom Pettifor identified the thief as Sidney Cugullere.
Pickles, the dog who found the World Cup trophy
The cup turned up on Sunday 27 March, a week after it went missing, and the police had nothing to do with it. David Corbett, a Thames lighterman, was out walking in Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, in south London, when his dog started sniffing at a parcel under a hedge. It was wrapped in old newspaper and tied with string. Corbett opened it and recognised the winners’ names on the bottom. The dog was Pickles, a four-year-old black and white collie.
Corbett took it to Gipsy Hill police station, and for a while the police suspected him; he had an alibi. The police kept the cup as evidence until 18 April, then gave it back to the FA. England won the tournament in July, with Bobby Charlton in the side, and Pickles was invited to the celebration banquet. Corbett received rewards that Wikipedia’s two articles on the story put at nearly £5,000 and £6,000. Pickles made a film, went on Blue Peter and was named Dog of the Year. He died in 1967, when his lead caught on a branch while he was chasing a cat. His collar is at the National Football Museum in Manchester.
The theft scared the FA into having a copy made in base metal, so that the original could stay locked away. FIFA had refused permission for any replica, so once the original went back to FIFA in 1970 the copy had to disappear as well, and for years its maker kept it under his bed. It came up at auction in 1997 and sold for just over £254,000, about ten times the reserve, because some bidders thought it might be the real thing. The buyer was FIFA, whose tests showed it was a replica. FIFA lent it to the National Football Museum, where it is on display.
The Jules Rimet Trophy stolen for good in 1983
Brazil kept the original at the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) in Rio de Janeiro, in a cabinet with a bullet-proof glass front. The back of the cabinet was wood. On 19 December 1983 two men overpowered the night watchman, forced the wooden back open with a crowbar and took the Jules Rimet Trophy, along with two other trophies.
The police traced the job to Sérgio Pereira Ayres, known as Sérgio Peralta, a banker and football agent, who had hired an ex-police officer and a decorator to carry it out. A safecracker he had approached first, Antonio Setta, said he had turned it down out of patriotism. An Argentine gold dealer, Juan Carlos Hernández, was accused of melting the cup into gold bars. He denied it, and the traces of gold found in his foundry did not match the trophy.
Pedro Berwanger, the federal police officer who led the investigation, never believed the melting story. The cup was gold-plated silver, not solid gold, so it could not have been turned into gold bars, and it was worth far more intact. He and others think it was sold on the black market and may still exist. The men were sentenced and then fled. The trophy has not been seen since.
Brazil has a copy: in 1984 the CBF presented the country’s president, João Figueiredo, with a replica made by Eastman Kodak from 1.8 kg of gold. The only piece of the original known to survive is its first base, the one replaced in 1954, which was rediscovered in 2014 in a basement at FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich.
What the World Cup trophy is made of
The current trophy is 36.8 cm tall and weighs 6.175 kg. It is cast in 18-carat gold by the lost-wax method at GDE Bertoni, a trophy maker in Paderno Dugnano, near Milan, which also makes the European Cup. The base, 13 cm across, holds two bands of green malachite. Gazzaniga wrote about the lines springing out of the base in spirals to receive the world. As he put it: “The world is a sphere so looks very similar to a football.”
It is also hollow. In 2010 the chemist Sir Martyn Poliakoff worked out that a solid gold trophy of that size would weigh 70 to 80 kg, far too heavy for a captain to hold over his head, and the manufacturer has since confirmed that it is hollow. FIFA’s own guide to the trophy still describes it as solid gold. The malachite has been repaired several times and the gold re-plated; FIFA dates the last restoration to 2005.
The words FIFA World Cup are engraved on the base, but you will not see the winners’ names when the cup is standing up. After the 1994 World Cup a plate was added underneath, and each winner is engraved on it with the year and the country’s name in its own language, such as 1974 Deutschland or 1994 Brasil. Spain’s first title went on in English, as 2010 Spain, and was corrected on the new plate made after 2018. The plate is replaced every cycle, and the names are laid out in a spiral so that there is room for more.
Why the winners do not keep the World Cup trophy
Until 2006 the champions did take the trophy home. They kept it in their federation’s trophy cabinet and returned it to FIFA before the next World Cup. After the 2005 restoration FIFA stopped lending it out. Since 2006 the winning team gets the original only for the presentation on the pitch; FIFA staff then take it back, and the team is given a copy to keep, the FIFA World Cup Winners’ Trophy.
That copy is gold-plated and made by the same firm, GDE Bertoni. Wikipedia’s article on the company calls it bronze in one sentence and brass in another. Only one person has ever been given an official replica: Nelson Mandela, before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
The original lives at the FIFA World Football Museum in Zurich. It comes out for the trophy tour, first run before the 2006 World Cup, for the final draw of the next tournament, and for the opening match and the final. Only a few people may touch it with bare hands: players and coaches who have won the World Cup, heads of state and FIFA officials. I like that rule more than I expected to. For a player, the only way to hold the World Cup trophy is to win it.
Who has won each World Cup trophy
| Team | Jules Rimet Trophy | FIFA World Cup Trophy | Titles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 1958, 1962, 1970 | 1994, 2002 | 5 |
| Germany | 1954 | 1974, 1990, 2014 | 4 |
| Italy | 1934, 1938 | 1982, 2006 | 4 |
| Argentina | None | 1978, 1986, 2022 | 3 |
| Uruguay | 1930, 1950 | None | 2 |
| France | None | 1998, 2018 | 2 |
| Spain | None | 2010, 2026 | 2 |
| England | 1966 | None | 1 |
Only three countries have won both cups: Brazil, Italy and Germany. Uruguay and England won only the first, and Argentina, France and Spain only the second. The players who shone in those tournaments are ranked on our best World Cup players page, and Diego Maradona, who held the modern cup in 1986 as Argentina’s captain, has a page of his own.
So the World Cup trophy is really two objects with two very different stories. The first was silver under its gold, went missing twice and ended up somewhere nobody has found. The second is gold but hollow, and since 2006 it has never been out of FIFA’s hands for long. Unless FIFA changes the rule, the 2030 champions, a hundred years after Uruguay, will do what Spain did: lift it on the pitch, give it back, and take a copy home. More of the tournament’s landmarks are on our World Cup records page.
Sources and method
FIFA’s articles The World Cup Trophy in numbers (2022) and The story of the FIFA World Cup Trophy (2026); Wikipedia’s pages on the FIFA World Cup Trophy, the 1966 theft and the 1983 theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy, Pickles (dog) and GDE Bertoni, all read on 26 September 2026.
Dimensions, weight, materials, the 1974 design competition and the replica rule come from FIFA, checked against Wikipedia. The accounts of both thefts come from Wikipedia, which cites the original press reports. The list of winners is FIFA’s. The rules are in How we verify.
Where the sources disagree
FIFA and Wikipedia agree on the dates of both thefts, the two designers and the list of winners. They differ on the points below. The one that matters most is whether the trophy is solid gold: FIFA’s 2022 guide says it is, while the manufacturer has confirmed that it is hollow.
| Point | FIFA | Wikipedia | Used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solid or hollow | Solid gold (2022 guide) | Hollow, confirmed by the manufacturer (FIFA World Cup Trophy) | Hollow |
| Height | 36.8 cm (2022); 36 centimetres (2026) | 36.8 cm | 36.8 cm |
| Where Pickles found the cup | Beneath a garden hedge (2026) | Under the hedge of Corbett’s house (1966 theft); at the bottom of a suburban garden hedge (FIFA World Cup Trophy); by the front wheel of a parked car (Pickles) | Under a hedge |
| Corbett’s reward | Not given | Rewards totalling £6,000 (1966 theft); nearly £5,000 (Pickles) | Both given |
| Price of the FA replica, 1997 | Not given | £254,500 (FIFA World Cup Trophy); £254,000 (Pickles) | Just over £254,000 |
| Metal of the winners’ copy | Gold-plated (2026) | Brass in one sentence, gold-plated bronze in another (GDE Bertoni) | Gold-plated, metal not stated |
| First base found | Not given | Rediscovered in 2014 (text); the BBC and Guardian reports it cites are dated January 2015 | 2014 |
| What happened to the 1983 thieves | Not given | Tried and convicted in absentia (FIFA World Cup Trophy); sentenced, then fled (1983 theft) | Sentenced, then fled |