2026 Topps Holiday Football: Mendoza’s Letter to Santa

Fernando Mendoza’s Dear Santa autograph relic has a football tucked under one arm, a blue signature below his photograph and a memorabilia window framed like a red wax seal. Cookie crumbs, string and a printed letter fill the rest of the card. The Raiders rookie has arrived on holiday stationery, and the layout makes remarkably good use of it.

2026 Topps Holiday Football becomes available October 23 at 1 p.m. Eastern. The official checklist supplies the product’s structure: 150 base cards followed by 50 rookies, with Chrome variations, holiday variations, four named insert sets and three autograph groupings. Box prices, pack configuration and odds are still to come on the announcement page.

Dear Santa makes the autograph part of the letter

Mendoza’s pictured card has three distinct focal points. His portrait occupies the upper left, his large blue autograph sits across a translucent label below it, and a black fabric swatch fills the circular window on the right. The cream paper background gives the ink room to stand out, while the red seal turns the relic opening into part of the letter’s design.

The preview identifies the swatch as player-worn memorabilia. That is the provenance stated on the card; it does not establish game use. The printed wish list is part of the artwork, with the certified autograph occupying its own panel.

Dear Santa has 29 checklist entries, including Mendoza, Ty Simpson, Jeremiyah Love, Carnell Tate and Makai Lemon. Base Autographs and Rookie Autographs are separate groupings with 94 and 40 entries respectively. Dear Santa therefore offers a particular autograph-and-relic design to follow within a much broader signature checklist.

Mendoza’s horizontal card is especially successful because the photograph, ink and fabric each remain easy to see. The cookies and string decorate the spaces between them. The signature still gets a generous writing area, and the memorabilia window looks deliberately placed rather than squeezed into a spare corner.

A 200-card base set with 50 rookies

Fernando Mendoza, Holiday Football promotional preview. Image: Topps.

The regular checklist runs from 1 to 200, with rookies occupying 151–200. Mendoza opens that rookie block, followed by Ty Simpson and Garrett Nussmeier. The separate Chrome variation checklist also contains 150 base entries and 50 rookies.

Mendoza’s base-style preview shows the visual foundation: a grey knitted-looking outer border, red-and-green sweater strip, candy-cane edging and branches crowded with ornaments. His black Raiders jersey and silver helmet stay clearly separated from all that colour. The team abbreviation at the top and shield at the bottom preserve a recognisable football-card structure underneath the decorations.

The rookie block accounts for a quarter of the 200-card base checklist. For someone following Mendoza across the release, this photographic card and Dear Santa already offer substantially different treatments: a conventional vertical player card and a horizontal signature-and-memorabilia piece built around the letter.

Holiday Back and Holiday Spirit take different rookie paths

Joe Burrow, Base Holiday Spirit Variation promotional preview. Image: Topps.

Holiday Back Variation Short Prints and Holiday Spirit Variation each have 40 base-player entries and ten rookies. The rookie selections are different. Mendoza, Simpson, Drew Allar and Love appear on the Holiday Back list; Nussmeier, Cade Klubnik, Arvell Reese and Caleb Downs appear on the Holiday Spirit list.

That distinction matters when building a player checklist. The two ten-card rookie groups have no names in common, so they are separate collecting paths rather than two matching versions of the same rookie selection.

Arvell Reese, Rookie Holiday Spirit Variation promotional preview. Image: Topps.

The Spirit previews show how much the background changes the card. Joe Burrow’s horizontal design surrounds his throwing pose with stockings, bells, snowflakes and gingerbread figures. Reese’s vertical rookie card uses wrapped gifts on a bright green field, with his blue Giants uniform filling the centre. Both retain the striped inner frame and sweater-style team strip, linking them to the base design even as the photographic setting disappears.

Josh Allen has company in the border

Josh Allen, Hidden Elf promotional preview. Image: Topps.

Hidden Elf takes a smaller approach to changing the image. On Josh Allen’s preview, a little elf holding a candy cane sits among the branches at the right edge, beside his upper arm. Allen’s throwing photograph and the ornament-filled frame still dominate; the extra character is a detail to find within them.

The 25-card Hidden Elf checklist includes Allen, James Cook, Joe Burrow and George Kittle. Allen’s preview makes the idea immediately readable: the elf is tucked into an already busy holiday border, so finding it becomes part of looking at the card. Burrow’s Spirit variation replaces the whole setting; Hidden Elf rewards a closer look at a familiar one.

Snow globes and frozen fields give the inserts their own look

Bijan Robinson, Snow Globe Moments promotional preview. Image: Topps.

Snow Globe Moments, Deck the Fields and Frozen Fields each have 25 checklist entries. Bijan Robinson’s Snow Globe Moments card puts his running photograph inside a glass globe on a broad black pedestal. The globe’s curved edge, falling snow and icy blue surround give the image depth, while a metallic-looking title plaque anchors the bottom.

The Falcons logo sits above the globe, leaving Robinson’s figure and the falling snow inside it. It is a complete decorative object built around the player photograph, with very little of the base card’s sweater-and-ornament frame remaining.

Drake Maye, Frozen Fields Foilfractor promotional preview, pictured 1/1. Image: Topps.

Drake Maye’s pictured Frozen Fields Foilfractor surrounds his red Patriots uniform with frost, stadium lights and large gold-coloured snowflakes. The preview is numbered 1/1 at the lower left. Maye’s bright jersey cuts through the cold blue background, making the player the strongest colour contrast on the card.

Mendoza’s letter remains the most distinctive preview here: the wax-seal relic window and broad autograph panel make the holiday theme work around the card’s two main attractions. Robinson’s snow globe offers a different strength, carrying the concept through the entire insert design. Those are two concrete reasons to follow Holiday Football into its October 23 launch, alongside a rookie variation checklist that deserves more than a passing glance.