Professional Footballers Association
The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) is the trade union for current and former professional footballers and scholars in England. It protects players’ rights, represents their views and supports their wellbeing throughout and beyond their careers. The PFA provides educational, financial, legal and mental-health support, while also promoting equality and helping footballers recognise their value as people, not just players.
The challenge
Having successfully delivered a wide range of projects for the Professional Footballers’ Association since 2023, we were delighted to be approached to produce the official programme for the PFA 2026 Awards Ceremony.
The challenge was to create more than simply an event programme. It needed to reflect the prestige and significance of the PFA Awards while providing guests with all the essential information they needed throughout the evening.
A key requirement was that the publication should feel premium and considered, with the quality and finish expected of a high-profile awards ceremony. It also needed lasting appeal, serving as a keepsake that nominees, winners and guests would want to retain beyond the event itself.
The programme therefore needed to strike the right balance between functionality and visual impact, presenting a substantial amount of editorial and event information in a way that felt elegant, engaging and easy to navigate.
The Solution
Building on our knowledge of the PFA’s existing publications, we retained the 210mm x 210mm square format, which is a familiar size across much of their brochure range. This gave the programme an ideal format for the photography, editorial content and event information.
To give the Awards programme a more premium and distinctive feel, we proposed a sophisticated black cover complemented by gold foil or spot UV detailing. Gold foiling was ultimately selected to create a sense of occasion and luxury, helping the programme feel immediately different from a standard corporate brochure.
The final publication was produced as a perfect-bound, digitally printed booklet, with a 300gsm cover and 170gsm interior pages. The substantial cover stock and quality interior paper provided a high-end feel, while the perfect binding gave the programme a clean, refined finish.
The design brought together essential event information with editorial content, photography, nominee profiles and details celebrating the achievements of the players and winners.
The result was a premium publication designed not only to enhance the guest experience on the night, but to become a lasting memento of the 2026 PFA Awards.
Platinum did a brilliant job with our PFA Awards programme printing. They effortlessly brought our vision to life and produced a special keepsake for those attending the Awards. Nothing was too much trouble, and they even hand-delivered the programmes to our venue to ensure they arrived safely. A seamless process from start to finish and we're so lucky to have worked with them during what is always an incredibly busy Awards season.