Every ball used in a FIFA or confederation match has to carry one of three quality marks, and the marks are not decorative. They are the outcome of seven laboratory tests with published numeric thresholds. Read those thresholds closely and the top mark turns out to allow a football exactly half the slack the middle mark allows.
The document that governs this is public and almost nobody reads it. FIFA’s Testing Manual for the FIFA Quality Programme for Footballs runs to 21 pages and sets out, test by test, what a ball has to survive before a manufacturer may print FIFA QUALITY PRO, FIFA QUALITY or FIFA BASIC on it. There is a machine that measures 4,500 points on the surface of a single ball. There is another that fires it at a steel plate 2,000 times. There is a tank that dunks it 250 times to see how much water it drinks.
The human half of the story sits somewhere else entirely. For the reporting on who actually assembles these balls, this article draws on a June 2026 field piece by Sunniya Ahmad Pirzada for Al Jazeera, reported in and around Sialkot, in northeastern Pakistan. One stitcher there, Ansar Majeed, has been doing the work for 35 years, and told the reporter that the thread cuts her skin in cold, dry weather: “Our hands show that we do this work.”
What the seven tests actually measure
Compulsory testing and marking for balls used in official matches dates to a decision by the International Football Association Board in March 1995, and the quality programme itself was introduced in 1996. Under Law 2 of the Laws of the Game, a ball used in a FIFA or confederation match must carry one of the marks. Law 2 itself sets the plain dimensions: spherical, made of suitable material, 68 to 70 cm in circumference, 410 to 450 g at the start of the match, inflated to 0.6 to 1.1 atmosphere at sea level.
The seven tests are circumference, sphericity, rebound, water absorption, weighing value, loss of pressure, and shape and size retention. A futsal ball gets an eighth, a balance test that rolls it down a five degree slope to see how far it drifts off a straight line, which is a different problem from the one an outdoor ball has to solve. If futsal is new to you, we have a separate explainer on the small sided game and how it reached Canada.
Some of the procedure is oddly specific. Balls are conditioned for at least 24 hours at 20°C and 65 percent humidity. Nine samples go to the lab for the two upper marks, six for the basic one, and one of them is kept untouched as a reference. The rebound rig drops the ball from exactly 2.00 metres, and the manual bothers to note that friction in the guidance system means the ball hits the plate at about 98.6 to 99.0 percent of true free fall speed. Testing for the two upper marks is carried out by Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology.
The three FIFA marks, and what each one allows
These are the published requirements for size 5 outdoor balls, taken from section 4.1 of the manual.
| Test (size 5 outdoor) | FIFA QUALITY PRO | FIFA QUALITY | FIFA BASIC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circumference | 68.5 to 69.5 cm | 68.0 to 70.0 cm | 68.0 to 70.0 cm |
| Sphericity, maximum | 1.5% | 1.8% | 1.8% |
| Rebound at 20°C | 135 to 155 cm | 125 to 155 cm | 125 to 155 cm |
| Rebound at 5°C, minimum | 125 cm | 115 cm | 115 cm |
| Spread across the 3 tested balls | max 10 cm | max 10 cm | max 10 cm |
| Water absorption, maximum | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Weighing value | 420 to 445 g | 410 to 450 g | 410 to 450 g |
| Loss of pressure over 72 hours | max 15% | max 20% | max 25% |
| Shape and size retention after 2,000 shots | circumference max 1.5 cm change, sphericity max 1.5% | circumference max 1.5 cm change, sphericity max 1.8% | not tested |
Two things stand out. The first is that FIFA QUALITY and FIFA BASIC ask for the same circumference and the same weight as Law 2 asks of any ball in any match: 68 to 70 cm, 410 to 450 g. On those two measures the middle and entry marks are not stricter than the Laws of the Game, they are identical to them. What separates the three marks lower down the table is pressure retention, roundness, and whether the ball is put in the shooting machine at all. A FIFA BASIC ball never is.
The second is that the professional mark is not a little tighter. It is tighter by a clean factor of two on the dimension a player would notice first.
The same tolerances, converted into millimetres and grams
FIFA publishes circumference, not diameter, and percentages rather than physical deviations. So we did the conversion. The figures below are Raw POV calculations from the thresholds in the table above, not numbers the manual prints.
| What the rule allows | FIFA QUALITY PRO | FIFA QUALITY and FIFA BASIC |
|---|---|---|
| Width of the circumference band | 1.0 cm | 2.0 cm |
| Gap between smallest and largest legal diameter | 3.2 mm | 6.4 mm |
| Width of the weight band | 25 g | 40 g |
| That band as a share of the mid point weight | 5.8% | 9.3% |
| Largest bump or flat spot allowed, on a 69.0 cm ball | 1.65 mm | 1.98 mm |
| Rebound as a share of the 2.00 m drop | 67.5% to 77.5% | 62.5% to 77.5% |
| Pressure left after 72 hours, starting from 0.80 bar | 0.68 bar | 0.64 bar (Quality), 0.60 bar (Basic) |
| Water it may take on, on a 430 g ball | 43 g | 43 g |
That last row is the one worth sitting with. A ball can legally finish a wet match having gained the weight of a small apple and still hold its mark.
The bounce test runs twice, and the cold one is the harder one
Rebound is measured ten times per ball at room temperature, never twice on the same spot. Then, for outdoor balls only, the whole thing is repeated cold. Samples are stored at 5°C for eleven hours, pressure adjusted, returned to the cold for another hour, and tested within two minutes of coming out. Miss the two minute window and the run is restarted.
A professional grade ball must still rebound at least 125 cm cold, against a 135 cm floor at room temperature. By our arithmetic that is a permitted loss of 7.4 percent of the minimum bounce, which is the closest thing in the manual to an admission that football is played outdoors in November. It is also the test that matters most to anyone who has watched a match in Toronto in late autumn, or read our piece on what the 2026 World Cup left behind beyond the stadiums.
Where the balls that carry these marks are made
The lab work happens in Switzerland. The assembly, for a large share of the world’s hand-stitched balls, happens in one district of Punjab. Al Jazeera reports that roughly 70 percent of the world’s hand-stitched footballs still start as cut panel kits in someone’s hands in Sialkot, that a Sialkot manufacturer produced the first World Cup ball made in Pakistan in 1982, and that every official World Cup ball since 2014 has been manufactured there.
The organisation of the work is unusual. Factories cut the panels and assemble the kits, then subcontract much of the stitching to more than 1,400 registered centres across the district, each inspected every four to eight weeks. Any workplace with five or more stitchers has to register with the Independent Monitoring Association for Child Labour. That monitoring system is the residue of the Atlanta Agreement, signed in Atlanta, Georgia on 14 February 1997 by the International Labour Office, UNICEF and the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which moved stitching out of homes and into monitored centres after a 1996 magazine photograph of a child stitching a ball drew international attention.
The ILO document announcing that partnership set an 18 month timetable, estimated that as many as 7,000 children were then working in the industry, and described Sialkot district as producing nearly 75 percent of the world’s hand-stitched balls for export. Set that beside Al Jazeera’s 2026 figure of about 70 percent and the district’s share of the hand-stitched world has barely moved in 29 years. What changed is not where hand stitching happens. It is how much hand stitching there is.
A 32 panel ball is stitched inside out, under tension, and then turned. In one household Al Jazeera visited, the mother and daughters stitch 26 panels and the father closes the last six by feel, pulling the final knot until it vanishes under the surface. It is the hardest part of the job and it is done last.
Why hand stitching is shrinking inside the city known for it
Machine stitching and thermal bonding now dominate. Al Jazeera quotes an industry figure putting hand-stitched balls at 80 to 90 percent of Sialkot production five or six years ago and about 20 percent today, with a working expectation that hand stitching could leave mainstream production within eight to ten years.
The arithmetic behind that is not mysterious. One factory worker turns out 50 to 60 machine-stitched balls a day. A skilled hand stitcher completes about five. That is a productivity gap of ten to twelve times per worker, and it is our own division of the two figures, not a number either source publishes. Al Jazeera reports one stitcher earning a little over six US dollars for a day of five match quality balls, which works out to about 1.20 US dollars a ball.
Two facts sit together awkwardly and both are true. The top tier match balls used at the highest level are factory made and thermally bonded, not hand stitched. And the tournaments that use them reliably raise orders for the hand-stitched training, retail and promotional balls that keep the centres busy. The craft is not supplying the final, it is supplying everything around it. Readers who liked our piece on the two quarries that supply the world’s curling stones will recognise the shape of this: a global sport resting on a supply chain narrower than the sport’s own footprint.
How to read the mark before you buy
The practical version is short. FIFA QUALITY PRO is the competition standard, with the tightest roundness, the narrowest weight window and the best pressure retention, and it is the only mark whose balls are also shot 2,000 times to check they hold their shape. FIFA QUALITY is the general training and club level mark. FIFA BASIC certifies that the ball meets the Law 2 dimensions and passes the core tests, without the shooting machine. FIFA’s own programme page lists more than 70 licensees.
If you are buying for a child, note the separate size 4 thresholds: 63.5 to 66.0 cm and 350 to 390 g, with a rebound window of 110 to 160 cm that is wider than any size 5 window in the manual. And if you are buying for a match on a cold field, the cold rebound minimum is the line in the table that will decide how the ball feels. Whether any of this changes what happens when someone strikes it is a separate question, one we looked at in our piece on the decline of the direct free kick.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between FIFA QUALITY PRO and FIFA QUALITY?
Both marks come from the same seven tests, but FIFA QUALITY PRO applies tighter thresholds. Circumference must fall between 68.5 and 69.5 cm instead of 68.0 to 70.0 cm, sphericity may not exceed 1.5 percent instead of 1.8 percent, weight must be 420 to 445 g instead of 410 to 450 g, and pressure loss over 72 hours may not exceed 15 percent instead of 20 percent.
How many tests does a football have to pass to carry a FIFA mark?
Seven for outdoor and beach soccer balls: circumference, sphericity, rebound, water absorption, weighing value, loss of pressure, and shape and size retention. Futsal balls take an eighth test, balance, which measures how far the ball drifts from a straight line as it rolls.
Does a FIFA BASIC ball get tested less than the others?
It is tested against looser thresholds and skips one test. Six samples are submitted instead of nine, the pressure loss allowance is 25 percent rather than 15, and the shape and size retention test, in which the ball is fired at a steel plate 2,000 times at 50 km/h, is not carried out for FIFA BASIC outdoor balls.
Where are most footballs made?
Al Jazeera reported in June 2026 that about 70 percent of the world’s hand-stitched footballs are assembled in the Sialkot district of Pakistan, across more than 1,400 registered stitching centres. Hand-stitched balls are now a minority of Sialkot’s own output, at roughly 20 percent, as machine stitching and thermal bonding have taken over the higher volume lines.
Is the official World Cup ball hand stitched?
No. Top tier official match balls are factory made and thermally bonded rather than hand stitched, though Al Jazeera reports that every official World Cup ball since 2014 has been manufactured in Sialkot. Hand stitching is now concentrated in premium training, retail and promotional balls.
Sources and method
From the primary documents. All test procedures and every threshold in the first table come from the FIFA Quality Programme for Footballs Testing Manual, version 1.1, dated 1 October 2022, published on FIFA’s digital hub. That is the version FIFA’s public document hub serves; a later revision may exist that we could not retrieve, and figures published by retailers and secondary sites sometimes disagree with the manual, so we used the manual. The Law 2 circumference, weight and pressure figures come from the Laws of the Game published by the International Football Association Board. The count of licensees comes from FIFA’s own programme page.
From other reporting. Everything about Sialkot, the stitching centres, production shares, output per worker and pay comes from the June 2026 Al Jazeera longform by Sunniya Ahmad Pirzada, credited and linked above. One short quotation is reproduced; the rest is paraphrased. The Atlanta Agreement date and signatories are documented by the International Labour Organization.
Raw POV analysis. The second table is ours. Diameters were derived from the published circumferences by dividing by pi, the sphericity percentages were converted to millimetres at a 69.0 cm circumference, rebound heights were expressed as a share of the fixed 2.00 m drop, and pressure figures were calculated from FIFA’s nominal 0.80 bar starting pressure for outdoor balls. The observation that the FIFA QUALITY PRO circumference and weight bands are exactly half and exactly five eighths the width of the FIFA QUALITY bands is ours, as is the observation that FIFA QUALITY and FIFA BASIC match the Law 2 dimensions rather than tightening them, the ten to twelve times productivity ratio between machine and hand stitching, and the comparison between the ILO’s 1997 estimate of nearly 75 percent and Al Jazeera’s 2026 figure of about 70 percent for Sialkot’s share of hand-stitched balls. Those two figures come from different bodies using different methods 29 years apart, so we present them as an order of magnitude, not a measured change.
What we did not do. We did not test a ball, visit a factory, or speak to anyone in Sialkot. We did not attempt to verify pay rates independently, and we make no claim about conditions at any named company. Where a figure is attributed to another outlet in the text, that attribution is the source of record.
