How Nicolás Maduro turned a Nike tracksuit into 2026’s most wanted item

Google searches for Nike Tech fleece have surged worldwide after Donald Trump shared on his social network Truth an image of the deportation of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who appears — according to what is circulating online — wearing a full Nike Tech tracksuit.

As often happens in a digital ecosystem capable of turning any event into a consumer stimulus, within just a few hours the garment went viral across X, TikTok, and Instagram. Articles, memes, and style commentary drove thousands of users to try to purchase the product, which quickly sold out, placing Nike at the center of an involuntary yet extraordinarily powerful wave of visibility. No advertising campaign, no endorsement was needed: collective curiosity and viral humor were enough to amplify the image, while also exposing the irony of a symbolic short circuit — a Venezuelan leader openly anti-American wearing one of the most iconic brands of global American capitalism.

Although there is no confirmation of the image’s authenticity, the episode once again shows how pop culture, social media, and politics can intertwine in ways that are as unpredictable as they are surreal, producing immediate and tangible market effects. In a state of hyper-normalization within an attention regime where images dominate meaning, form overrides substance, and immediacy neutralizes complexity, even the arrest of a head of state becomes secondary to the brand he is wearing. In the end, it is a tracksuit that comes to encapsulate a political event — and it does so faster than any official statement ever could.