FIFA Collect, the official digital collectibles platform for the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) soccer organization, will migrate to its own Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible FIFA blockchain—leaving behind Algorand in the process. 

Scheduled to occur no sooner than May 20, the migration away from Algorand does not require any immediate action from FIFA Collect users or NFT owners. 

“As FIFA Collect evolves, we are migrating the platform to the FIFA Blockchain, an EVM-compatible blockchain,” an official FAQ about the migration reads. “This upgrade will support better performance, future features, and improved scalability.”

FIFA Collect launched in 2022 during the lead-up to the last World Cup, minting its soccer-themed digital collectibles on Algorand, a proof-of-stake alternative to Ethereum and Solana that was announced as the official blockchain platform of the soccer organization in May of that year.

In December 2023, the platform minted a collection of digital collectibles on Ethereum scaling network Polygon as well, but a representative for the platform told Decrypt at the time that it was merely expanding its collectible base, not “shifting away” from Algorand. 

Now though, FIFA really is ditching Algorand.

While the core experience for FIFA Collect users is expected to stay the same, support for Algorand wallets like Pera and Defly will no longer exist after the migration. Instead, users will need to use EVM-compatible wallets like MetaMask or Rabby.

The platform plans to share more details about its upcoming blockchain “soon,” according to the FAQ, noting that its creation is meant to “support new experiences, enable wallet compatibility, and provide stronger foundations for future innovation.”

Users who had previously exported NFTs off the platform must re-import them before May 20 in order to have them migrated seamlessly with other FIFA Collect collectibles. 

Algorand previously made headlines for acquiring music sharing service Napster in 2022. The blockchain's native ALGO token is down 5.5% in the last 24 hours to around $0.22, nearly 94% off its 2019 all-time high of $3.56. 

Representatives for FIFA Collect and Algorand did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

Edited by Andrew Hayward