Football is well known for its historic relationship with printed ephemera, from paper matchday tickets and season programmes to the dog-eared, start-of-season team photoshoots you’d once have found pasted on millions of teenage bedroom walls. But as the world transitioned to the online sphere, and tickets became QR codes and photoshoots were just posted to Instagram accounts, this physical, tactile world was slowly lost. That’s what makes the publications keeping this legacy alive so important, especially when they’re as creatively minded and community-oriented as Queenzine, the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL) fanzine.
“We wanted to give people the opportunity to discover Queenzine in places that weren’t exclusive to football.”
Hannah Gordon
Queenzine – Issue 9 Gothenburg (Photography: Rebecca Gustafsson)
Launched in 2025 with cover star Klara Bühl, left winger for Bayern Munich, Queenzine has since had Chelsea’s Aggie Beever-Jones, Arsenal’s Van Domselaar, and Barcelona mid-fielder Vicky López, digging into the stories, journeys and successes of each pioneering player and the dedicated fandoms that surround them and their team. But it doesn’t just focus on the pitch, Queenzine proves how much women’s football is showing up in contemporary culture, with articles on fashion, music and film. The Queenzine team knows the importance of both the online and IRL world – you can find the fanzine online, with special takeovers of the UWCL socials, but also get your hands on limited edition runs of the magazine in the hero city of each edition.
For it’s latest issue, Queenzine rooted its roaming location pin firmly in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, to launch just in time for the UWCL’s matchday four, when the issue’s hero team, BK Häcken, will be hosting Chelsea. “Following BK Häcken’s exciting success in the UEFA Women’s Europa League last season, it made sense to keep this momentum as they entered into the UEFA Women’s Champions League,” says Hannah Gordon, campaign manager at Queenzine. There’s a few firsts for this issue. Not only is it BK Häcken’s first time in Queenzine, but it’s the fanzine’s first time in Sweden, and first ever coach cover star – Elena Sadiku. With such a novel issue, a novel approach was needed to bring its limited edition drop into the world, and here’s where Swedish Girls come into the story.
Swedish Girls is the artist and design duo made up of Josefin Zachrisson and Mira Bergh, who specialise in experimental installation, objects, performance and spatial environment, and they were tasked with designing five bespoke magazine stands to hold the new issue of Queenzine. “Gothenburg is known for its links to art and considered design, which is why the collaboration with Swedish Girls felt so natural,” says Hannah. “Our aim for Queenzine is to explore the wider parts of culture and how this crossover happens into the football community.” The decision to have the stands in five different locations was also an important facet for Queenzine, as it realised their explorations of the Swedish concept Allemansrätten, also known as the Right of Public Access, a constitutional law in Sweden that allows everyone to roam the countryside freely, regardless of who owns the land. “We wanted to give people the opportunity to discover Queenzine in places that weren’t exclusive to football,” says Hannah. Between 5-11 November, alongside two stands in the BK Häken stadium, the Queenzine mags and stands found homes in the contemporary art gallery Galleri Thomassen, the design and craft museum Röhsska Museum and Juno Juno, an Italian vintage clothing shop.
Take a read of Queenzine’s Gothenburg edition
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Stand designed by Swedish Girls at Galleri Thomassen. Photography by Elvira Glante.
Stand designed by Swedish Girls at Röhsska Museum. Photography by Elvira Glante
For Swedish Girls, the project was a no-brainer. As Josefin identifies, “women’s football is the coolest form of football and it should have way more resources and attention from the media.” Josefin also has a personal relationship with the topic. “Not to get sentimental, but I found my old diary from when I was 15 not long before we were asked to do this project, and the only thing I wrote about was football,” she says. “I really wanted to go pro, a dream that back then felt unattainable because everyone knew that women couldn’t make a living from football.” While Josefin now recognises that much has changed for the better, things are still far from equal, in football as well as in the art world. “We talked about this lost dream during the process, compared it to the dreams we have now and saw a lot of similarities to the state of our industry when it comes to equality. All this combined made it make sense for us to do this collaboration.”
“Sometimes a rigid framework fuels creativity and it made sense to work with this project as an extension of our own practice.“
Mira Bergh
For the stands, Swedish Girls turned to a material they have a long and fruitful relationship with, something that’s become their USP – stainless steel. See the duo’s Clean Girl fountains, exhibited during Vienna Design Week, long winding benches and stylish ash trays, all expertly forged using the metal. The five designs are sweeping, sculptural beauties, some elongated and elegant, some shorter and more abstract, using poles of steel to create forms that will allow the fanzines to rest in pride of place, living on a very beautiful pedestal. “It was fun to be able to do five alterations of the design to show the possibilities in the technique and how it will play different roles in the venues they are showcased in,” says Josefin.
The numerous poles bent into uniformity apply another of Swedish Girls’ fixations: repetition. “Sometimes a rigid framework fuels creativity and it made sense to work with this project as an extension of our own practice,” says Mira, an idea you can likewise apply to football – from structure and form within your starting 11, moments of brilliance can emerge: an overhead bicycle kick, or an iconic, back-heel nutmeg.
Swedish Girls’ saw some similarities in their own style to that of UEFA’s profile, like its crown of stars, which the duo have attached to their stands in a “adding-logo-to-a-match-shirt-manner”, says Mira, the repetitive stars simultaneously contrasting and mirroring the many poles of steel. The UEFA visual world is encapsulated further with its deep blue gradient that’s been airbrushed onto the stands at varying points. “Merging your own universe with someone else’s is scary, since you work so hard for your practice, you instinctively want to protect it. This is the reason why we so rarely do it,” says Josefin. “Since this was a context we wanted to support, we decided to challenge ourselves and it has been very rewarding. It’s been fun to flip the point of view and see what comes out of it.”
The primary goal behind the Queenzine and Swedish Girls collab was to get the mag into as many fans’ hands as possible, and this dedication to fandom extends into the zine’s pages. “Häcken has a really strong, passionate fanbase that we wanted to get to know and really spotlight,” says Hannah. Alongside articles written by Swedish editor Emma Tobiasson, including the hero interview with coach Sadiku, you’ll find pieces dissecting fan culture, accompanied by photographs by Nora Rönnfors that aim to visualise the experience of being a Häcken supporter at their home stadium, the Nordic Wellness Area, for those who attend the match, and those fans who might have had the chance to enter the stadium. “The best part about physical activations is that fans can be part of something real, that celebrates a hero story from their club and bounces off the energy of the UWCL being in town,” ends Hannah.
If you didn’t manage to catch Swedish Girls’ stands and get your hands on a physical copy of Queenzine, don’t fret! You can now enjoy the full zine online here.
Queenzine – Issue 9 Gothenberg (Photography: Nora Rönnfors)
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Stand designed by Swedish Girls at Galleri Thomassen. Photography by Elvira Glante.
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