Telstar 18 balls

Telstar 18

— ball model designed by Adidas for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Named after the legendary Telstar model, the first ball in the distinctive black and white mottled colour scheme, with white hexagons and black pentagons. However, in terms of design, the original Telstar 18 is more similar to the previous tournament models Beau Jeu 16 and Brazuca 14 – it does not consist of penta- and hexagonal patches, but of six complex-shaped parts. The difference lies in the fact that these parts have angular rather than smooth contours, which is why the seams are obtained in the form of broken lines. The design includes elements in the form of a pixel pattern of grey shades. An interesting feature of the original Telstar 18 is the NFC chip sewn into the shell, which allows using a smartphone or other gadget to open a “secret page” with information about the ball.

In addition to the original tournament balls, under the Telstar 18 marking, 7 more types of balls are produced, including souvenir, children's, mini-football models, as well as training and amateur models with a simplified design (which, however, is also inspired by the original Telstar and provides 6 squares and 12 parallelograms).