2026 World Cup mascots include bald eagle Clutch, jaguar Zayu and moose Maple

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Next year’s World Cup will have three mascots, a bald eagle Clutch in the U.S., a jaguar Zayu in Mexico and a moose Maple in Canada.

FIFA made its announcement Thursday in a news release, less than nine months before the June 11 opener of the tournament, the first World Cup to be played in three nations.

For the 1994 World Cup in the U.S., organizers revealed a dog named Striker as the mascot during a news conference in October 1992 at Hollywood’s Mann Chinese Theater. A name-the-mascot campaign included more than 25,000 entries.

Past World Cup mascots also included a lion Willie (England 1966), a boy Juanito (Mexico 1970), two boys Tip and Tap (West Germany 1974), a boy Gauchito (Argentina 1978), an orange Naranjito (Spain 1982), a jalapeño pepper Pique (Mexico 1986), a stick figure Ciao (Italy 1990), a cockerel Footix (France 1998), futuristic creatures Ato, Kaz and Nik (Japan and South Korea 2002), a lion Goleo VI and a soccer ball Pille (Germany 2006), a leopard Zakumi (South Africa 2010), an armadillo Fuleco (Brazil 2014), a wolf Zabivaka (Russia 2018) and a floating keffiyeh La’eeb (Qatar 2022).

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