The Rainbow
Shirts of 211 national teams in a circular glass case, ranged by colour.
Mister No — CC BY 3.0 · Ank Kumar — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ank Kumar — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ank Kumar — CC BY-SA 4.0
FIFA opened this museum in February 2016 in the city where it is headquartered: three floors, some 3,500 square metres and more than a thousand objects covering every men's and women's World Cup. The building is no architectural landmark — the lower floors of an office block, refitted — but the display itself is highly professional and far more visual than textual, which is what makes it work for children. At the entrance you meet **"the Rainbow"**: a thirty-five-metre circular glass showcase carrying the national-team shirt of every FIFA member association — 211 of them — arranged neither alphabetically nor by ranking but by the colour of the shirt. At the heart of the exhibition stands the **original FIFA World Cup trophy** itself, the object most visitors come for. Add an interactive hall, the largest pinball machine ever built, and a skills zone on a separate ticket. Be honest with yourself before paying: twenty-six francs is real money, and the museum tells FIFA's story the way FIFA likes it told — the corruption scandals that shook the organisation over the past decade are effectively absent. Treat it as a museum of football rather than a critical history of the body that runs it, and for a family of football lovers it is the most enjoyable option in Zurich. Getting there is easy: Zürich Enge station by train or tram, just south of the centre.
Shirts of 211 national teams in a circular glass case, ranged by colour.
The World Cup itself, not a replica.
Games, skills and the largest pinball machine ever made.
Seestrasse 27, 8002 Zurich (at Tessinerplatz, by Zürich Enge station)
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Normally yes — it is displayed in Zurich. But it leaves its case for global tours and in the run-up to and during World Cup finals, and can be away for weeks or months. If it is your main reason for coming, open the museum's website the day before; they usually announce when it is off display.