- Three-time Ballon d'Or winner Aitana Bonmatí has signed with Gatorade, joining Team Gatorade ahead of the new football season.
- The deal was announced on August 14, 2026, and plugs into Gatorade's global "Is It In You?" platform, which spotlights preparation and sports science over highlight-reel moments.
- Bonmatí joins a football roster that already includes Vinícius Júnior, Luis Díaz, and Christian Pulisic.
- The partnership will also spotlight Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) research into female athletes' hydration needs.
Gatorade has added Aitana Bonmatí to its global football roster, announcing the deal on August 14, 2026, just ahead of the new season.
The three-time Ballon d’Or winner and FC Barcelona midfielder becomes the newest face of Gatorade’s long-running “Is It In You?” platform, joining forerunners like Vinícius Júnior and Luis Díaz, who fronted the brand’s “Trust What’s Inside” campaign earlier this year alongside Christian Pulisic.
Bonmatí arrives with one of the most decorated résumés in women’s football. She’s won the Ballon d’Or Féminin three years running, was named the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup’s best player, and became the first footballer to win the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year award in 2024.
In September 2024, she signed a four-year extension with Barcelona, turning down a release-clause offer from Chelsea and interest from NWSL clubs to stay at the club she’s called home since 2012.
Gatorade isn’t her only current partnership. Bonmatí has been an Adidas ambassador since July 2024, most recently fronting the brand’s “Illuminated” docuseries, and became the face of Hublot’s UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 timekeeping campaign in mid-2025.
Gatorade itself has spent 2026 leaning hard into football and women’s sport: after April’s “Trust What’s Inside” relaunch, it named tennis great Venus Williams as the first ambassador for its “Body of Science” research initiative studying women’s hydration across life stages.
Bonmatí’s signing extends that thread into the traditionally men’s-heavy football roster, pairing her with a brand whose GSSI research arm has found elite female players can lose between one and one-and-a-half litres of fluid per 90-minute match.
In a statement, PepsiCo International Beverages CEO Eugene Willemsen said Bonmatí’s daily discipline made her a natural fit for a brand built on the same idea: no shortcuts, only preparation.
Bonmatí described her career as built on what she calls “invisible training”, the recovery sessions and daily choices fans never see.
The timing lines up with Gatorade’s broader 2026 football push, which has run alongside rival campaigns like Adidas’s Messi-and-Yamal-fronted “LA FINAL” activation around the World Cup final.
For Gatorade, locking in the world’s best female player heading into a marquee season signals that it wants credibility in the women’s game to match its footprint in the men’s.
Takeaways
Gatorade signing the reigning best player in women’s football right before a season that includes Barcelona’s Champions League defense and Spain’s continued push at the top of the international rankings is a straightforward brand move: stand next to whoever’s winning.
But it’s also part of a bigger pattern. Gatorade has spent 2026 building a genuine two-track roster: one leaning on marquee men’s names for World Cup buzz, the other investing ambassador dollars and actual research into women’s sports science through Venus Williams and now Bonmatí.
Tying the deal to GSSI data collection, rather than just a face on a bottle, makes it a more substantive bet than a typical endorsement.
Does adding Bonmatí give Gatorade more credibility in women’s football than a men’s-only roster ever could? How much will GSSI’s female-athlete hydration research actually change how Gatorade markets to women versus men?
