Disney has announced a major new sponsorship deal with the Kraft Heinz Company that’ll impact Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Disney Cruise Line, with the partnership beginning at the upcoming 2026 D23 Expo. Signs point to this being a big-budget corporate alliance that could yield positive results at EPCOT, DCA, and beyond. Here’s the full announcement, followed by our commentary.
The Walt Disney Company and the Kraft Heinz Company announced a landmark, long-term multi-year strategic alliance, bringing together two of the world’s most iconic companies. The enterprise-wide alliance spans food service, media, events, and more. The partnership promises a platform for innovation and storytelling that reaches families wherever they engage with Disney and Kraft Heinz brands both in parks and cruises, and at home.
The alliance will show up across Disney’s North American parks and resorts, Disney Cruise Line, and Disney’s studios and streaming platforms, and creates opportunities involving Disney’s iconic franchises. The collaboration enables Disney and Kraft Heinz to deliver new menu offerings, distinctive dining experiences, and storytelling-driven offerings inspired by Disney’s beloved stories and franchises.
Ten Kraft Heinz brands, including HEINZ, Philadelphia, and Kraft Mac & Cheese, will become part of the Disney Parks, bringing familiar favorites to Main Street USA, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and other destinations in the parks & resorts. The alliance will introduce new menu items, guest experiences, and product offerings at hundreds of dining locations throughout Walt Disney World, Disneyland Resort, and on Disney Cruise Line sailings out of North America.
Here’s the commercial for the new Kraft Heinz and Disney corporate alliance:
The Kraft Heinz Company and The Walt Disney Company have announced a landmark, long-term multi-year strategic alliance.
Kraft Heinz brands will now show up across Disney’s North American parks and resorts, Disney Cruise Line, and Disney’s studios and streaming platforms. pic.twitter.com/VsK3rIPKL8
— Boardwalk Times (@BoardwalkTimes) July 21, 2026
Here’s what leadership from both companies is saying:
Disney Corporate Alliances is focused on working with iconic brands with shared values to create meaningful experiences that bring families closer to the stories and places they love. The collaboration with Kraft Heinz is the perfect demonstration of another brand that understands how families connect through everyday moments, and together we will build creative experiences for our consumers across our destinations, platforms, and fan touchpoints.
~Becca Vodnoy, SVP of Corporate Alliances, The Walt Disney Company
Kraft Heinz and Disney are two companies that are woven into the fabric of family life. For generations, families have grown up with our brands side by side, watching Disney favorites with a bowl of Kraft Mac & Cheese or reaching for HEINZ at the table. This alliance is about showing up together in the moments that matter most, whether at the parks or at home, to deliver elevated experiences and storytelling that turn everyday meals into memories that last a lifetime.
~Nicolas Amaya, President of North America at Kraft Heinz Company
The collaboration combines Kraft Heinz’s leadership in flavor with Disney’s culinary creativity and storytelling to introduce new menu offerings and bespoke guest experiences across U.S. Disney Parks and Disney Cruise Line. This includes the debut of new HEINZ condiment stations and custom-designed equipment throughout the parks.
Additionally, HEINZ will delight fans at the upcoming 2026 D23 Expo on August 14, 15, and 16 at the Anaheim Convention Center with new sauces from their Sauce Vault on the show floor.
Here’s how D23 described that: “Explore the world aboard the HEINZ Flavor Ferry, sample globally inspired sauces, and snap photos across four regions. It’s a flavorful world after all, with HEINZ. Be among the first 570 flavor explorers each day to secure a limited-edition “it’s a flavorful world” pin.”
The alliance also unlocks opportunities for integrated marketing campaigns, digital content and brand-led marketing campaigns across Disney’s media platforms — creating powerful opportunities for families and fans to engage across meals, moments and memories.
The multi-year collaboration brings Kraft Heinz brands to consumers at scale through one of the world’s most powerful entertainment ecosystems. Inspired by Disney’s enduring cultural impact and multi-generational fandom, the alliance advances Kraft Heinz’s ambition to meet consumers wherever culture is happening — at the intersection of food, sports, and entertainment.
The alliance officially launches this summer, with activations and experiences rolling out across North American Disney parks, resorts, cruises, and more throughout the year. Fans can also expect surprises at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event this August, offering an early glimpse into the collaboration.
Our Commentary
We don’t typically cover catsup (or is it ketchup?!) or corporate alliances here at DTB, but this one is mildly interesting to me for a few reasons.
First, it is being widely publicized and promoted. The above press release can be found on the official Walt Disney Company website, which is usually reserved for bigger news. Press releases have also gone out from both Disney and Kraft Heinz Company, and the latter doesn’t typically email the latest sauce news to Disney bloggers.
In addition to the comparatively low-effort endeavor of email, there’s also a lot of creative collateral, including multiple (clever) posts and a commercial. There’s also the Sauce Vault booth at the D23 Expo. This is a lot more than we’ve seen from other recent partnerships.
From the outside (and going by memory), this strikes me as the biggest corporate alliance for Disney since they inked a deal with Impossible to be the preferred plant-based burger of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, etc. That was way back in late February 2020, and was quickly overshadowed by, ahem, other news. (Bob Iger stepped down and Chapek took over as CEO later the same day.)
Speaking of the dark days of Bob Chapek, this partnership with Kraft Heinz undoes one of the cutbacks instituted during that regime, which was replacing Kraft condiments with cheaper, off-brand ones. Now, I’m not about to suggest that Kraft Heinz is the summit of the sauce scene, but it’s certainly better than whatever it is the parks have been using since around 2020. So in one very little way, this deal undoes a small bit of damage from that era.
This partnership will undoubtedly overshadow the Impossible one, as it’s an overall deal that encompasses not just parks & resorts, but also the studios, streaming, and even ESPN. So expect to see Baby Yoda eating Kraft Mac & Cheese in the next Star Wars, Troy Aikman grumbling about cream cheese during the Super Bowl, and more. Heck, maybe there will even be a ketchup cannon in the Disney whatever-it-is of Fortnite. Fans of that would eat it up.
If you’re wondering what the Kraft Heinz partnership is likely to yield in the parks, I’d look no further than the Impossible deal and the menus for the upcoming 2026 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, as well as future DCA culinary events.
The playbook here would be either to have one booth that’s specifically sponsored by Kraft Heinz and uses its products in everything on that marketplace menu, or have a variety of dishes scattered around the event feature Kraft Heinz products.
It’s likely that the same will happen with menus throughout Walt Disney World and Disneyland drawing attention to specific items that feature Kraft Heinz products. This doesn’t mean that we’ll be inundated with dubious culinary concoctions with copious catsup contrivances; it just means that we’ll see a bit of product placement for brand awareness purposes.
Nothing that doesn’t already happen, for the most part, just likely on a larger scale. I’d also expect some fun and cool integrations, with Casey’s Corner immediately coming to mind as a prime opportunity. I’m also curious to see what Kraft does in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. All of the Coca-Cola integrations have been really well-executed.
With that said, we do expect something a bit bigger. Walt Disney World has been pretty aggressive with unique sauces and condiments in the last several years, with notable examples being dipping sauces for fries and ones slathering chicken tenders (there are already 13 of them!). We’d expect to see more like this at counter service restaurants on both coasts.
Beyond that, Disney and Kraft Heinz are teasing new “guest experiences.” Normally, I’d assume that’s a throwaway buzzword, much like storytelling. (That word also appears in the press release more than once, which could be a sign that Pixar’s next movie is a coming of age tale about a tomato’s journey from vine to factory to bottle to table, or utterly meaningless.)
In this case, guest experiences appears several times, so I’m guessing there’s actually some meat to it. Maybe it’ll be something like Club Cool in the former Future World at EPCOT. And if you were concerned that this would be some ordinary guest experience, fear not. It’ll be bespoke.
When families are debating which interactive sauce experiences to try, the first question they ask is, “is it bespoke?” The last thing anyone wants to do with their valuable vacation time at Walt Disney World is a garden variety sauce activation, like some medieval peasant. As we’re always saying here at DTB, “bespoke or bust!”
In all seriousness, my hope is that this Disney x Kraft partnership leads to something bigger and better than a bespoke sauce activation.
Once a defining structure of EPCOT Center, the sponsorship model is largely dead at Walt Disney World. There are only a few exceptions to this, such as Test Track at Chevrolet, Brooks shoes for runDisney, and Coca-Cola everywhere.
While it’s a bit gratuitous at Test Track for my tastes, I still believe that the sponsorship model can be a net positive for Walt Disney World and guests. Most noticeably, it can incentivize regular ride refreshes, better upkeep, and greater overall investments into attractions.
The Land pavilion at EPCOT has been sponsor-less for over 15 years (Living with the Land lost its last sponsor, Chiquita Brands, 5 years ago). Disney and Kraft Heinz inking a landmark corporate alliance presents an opportunity for a full circle moment there, with Kraft returning to sponsor the pavilion for the first time since 1992.
Perhaps the Sauce Vault at D23 is just a pretext, and will actually showcase a surprise: the return of Kitchen Kabaret and Sunshine Seasons Food Fair. Now that would be bespoke as all get out!
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Your Thoughts
What are your thoughts about this news? Pleased to see Walt Disney World and Disneyland partner with Kraft Heinz or do you prefer off-brand sauces and condiments? Excited for the all-new culinary storytelling and bespoke guest experiences that this partnership promises? Agree or disagree with our assessment of the news? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!