McDonald's plans World Cup promotions as traffic surges loom

McDonald’s has turned the FIFA World Cup 26 into more than a marketing splash. The company’s U.S. meal launched June 4, and a Happy Meal with 23 Squishmallows plushies, including the mascots for the three host countries, is set to follow June 9, putting crews on notice that a wave of collectible-driven orders is coming through pickup, delivery, and the drive-thru.

The U.S. World Cup meal pairs a customer’s choice of a Big Mac or 10-piece Chicken McNuggets with gold-packaged Big Mac Sauce and one of nine collectible cups. Breakfast versions include a Sausage McMuffin with Egg or Sausage Biscuit with Egg. McDonald’s says the meal can be ordered for pickup or delivery, which adds another layer of handoff pressure for restaurants already managing front counter traffic, kitchen timing, lobby flow, and delivery staging.

That matters because collectible promotions do not behave like ordinary limited-time offers. They tend to create more questions at the register, more substitutions, more repeated checks on what is still available, and more friction when customers want the promotion, but not the wait. In a system built on line speed, those details can determine whether a surge feels manageable or miserable for the crew working it.

The campaign also shows how McDonald’s is thinking about scale. The company says roughly 95% of its more than 45,000 restaurants in over 100 countries are owned and operated by independent local business owners, which means the real work of absorbing the rush will fall on franchisees and store managers deciding how many people to schedule, where to place them, and how much prep to front-load before the crowd hits. Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s global chief marketing officer and head of new business ventures, is framing the campaign as a worldwide matchday push with local relevance, but the operational load lands one restaurant at a time.

McDonald’s has been down this road before. In August 2024, it launched a global Collector’s Edition cup promotion, another reminder that the company knows collectibles can move traffic as much as menu items can. The new campaign comes as McDonald’s has also created a Restaurant Experience Team spanning Operations, Supply Chain, Franchising, Development, Restaurant Design, Delivery, and Speedee Labs, a lineup that signals how central execution has become to the business.

For workers, the question is not whether the World Cup can sell burgers and chicken. It is whether stores can forecast labor, stage prep, and keep service stable when the collectible rush starts arriving all at once.