Today, the work on the creation of a unique art installation that will be digitized and transformed into an NFT trophy started in the UEFA EURO 2020 Football Village in St. Petersburg. The idea to create a completely new award for the best goal of the UEFA EURO 2020 Championship was put forward by Gazprom, an official sponsor of the tournament. Russian futuristic calligraphy artist Pokras Lampas was invited to translate the idea into reality.

As envisaged by the artist, the installation will be completed by June 12. The artwork consists of 432 footballs bearing a calligraphic ornament with the names of the Championship, Gazprom, the Gazprom International Children's Social Programme Football for Friendship and its values – friendship, equality, fairness, health, peace, devotion, victory, traditions, and honour – encoded into it. Only the future winner’s football will remain untouched by the calligraphy until the name of the winner is announced. The footballs will form an open art space available to anyone wishing to create unusual content for their audience.

The art installation will later cease to exist as a physical object and reemerge as a digital work in the form of an NFT. The digital award and the winner’s football will be presented to the author of the best goal of the UEFA EURO 2020 Championship. Young ambassadors of the Football for Friendship Programme from all host countries of the European Championship will take part in the award ceremony. The hologram image of the prize will be submitted for display to the headquarters of UEFA in Nyon, Switzerland.

The prize for the winner of the Goal of the Tournament will be the first digital trophy in the history of football. By merging physical perception and the digital realm, it will serve as a spiritual embodiment of EURO 2020: a global event that helps people from around the world bond over sports.

“This is not the first time that Gazprom, a long-standing partner of UEFA, has come forward with an initiative facilitating the development of world football,” said Guy-Laurent Epstein, Marketing Director at UEFA. “Gazprom’s Goal of the Tournament trophy is a unique event in the history of world sports, and we hope that we will have many great goals to choose from over the next month.”