What Happened to Jules Rimet Trophy?

The Jules Rimet Trophy, initially known simply as 'Victory' or the 'World Cup', was the original prize for the FIFA World Cup, first presented at the inaugural tournament in Uruguay in 1930. Designed by French sculptor Abel Lafleur, it depicted Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, and was crafted from gold-plated sterling silver on a lapis lazuli base, standing 35 centimeters high and weighing 3.8 kilograms. In 1946, it was officially renamed the Jules Rimet Trophy in honor of the former FIFA President who initiated the World Cup competition.

The trophy's history is marked by two significant thefts. During World War II, Ottorino Barassi, the Italian vice-president of FIFA, secretly hid the trophy in a shoebox under his bed in Rome to prevent it from falling into Nazi hands. The first public theft occurred in March 1966, just months before the World Cup in England, when it was stolen from a public exhibition at Westminster Central Hall in London. A ransom demand was made, but the trophy was famously recovered seven days later by a black and white collie named Pickles, who found it wrapped in newspaper under a garden hedge in South London. Following this incident, the English Football Association secretly commissioned a replica, which was used for public engagements between 1966 and 1970, while the original was kept secure.

A key turning point came in 1970 when Brazil, after defeating Italy in the final, became the first nation to win the World Cup three times. According to Jules Rimet's original stipulation, this achievement granted Brazil permanent ownership of the trophy. The trophy was then put on display at the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, housed in a cabinet with a bulletproof glass front.

The trophy's final disappearance occurred on December 19, 1983. Thieves bypassed the bulletproof glass by prying open the wooden rear panel of the display cabinet and stole the trophy along with two other cups. Despite arrests and investigations, the Jules Rimet Trophy was never recovered. It is widely believed to have been melted down into gold bars and sold, although some theories suggest it might still exist on the black market, partly because it was gold-plated sterling silver, not solid gold, making its bullion value less than often assumed. In 1984, the CBF commissioned a replica of their own, made by Eastman Kodak, to replace the lost original.

The consequence of the trophy's permanent loss was the commissioning of a new FIFA World Cup Trophy, which was introduced in 1974. This new trophy, designed by Silvio Gazzaniga, is made of 18-karat gold with a malachite base and is never permanently awarded to any nation, regardless of how many times they win. Instead, winning teams receive a gold-plated replica, and the original remains FIFA's property, kept securely at the FIFA World Football Museum in Zürich. As of 2026, the original Jules Rimet Trophy remains lost, with only its original base, rediscovered in FIFA's basement in 2014, serving as a tangible piece of the original artifact. Various licensed replicas are still sold by FIFA and displayed in museums, such as the one at the National Football Museum in Manchester.