Celebrity Telegram Gifts: Snoop Dogg, Khabib's Papakha and Durov's Cap

Celebrity Telegram gifts are limited collectibles that the messenger releases together with a famous name. July 2025 brought the Snoop Dogg release: a celebrity digital gift drop of five collections. Two more partner releases followed later that year: Khabib Nurmagomedov in November and the UFC in December. Two other items carry the name of the company’s founder. Dates and supply figures below come from the platform’s own pages and from posts by Durov and the stars, checked on 26 September 2026.

How Celebrity Gifts Work

A partner release starts as a limited item bought with Stars inside the app. Since 1 January 2025, limited items can be upgraded into collectibles. According to the official blog, the upgrade costs a small amount of Stars that covers blockchain fees, and the new version gets a unique model, backdrop, symbol and number.

An upgraded item stays inside Telegram until its owner moves it to the TON blockchain as a non-fungible token (NFT). What sets a partner release apart is the creator line. The page of a Snoop Dogg collectible reads “by @snoopdogg”, and a papakha reads “by @khabib_nurmagomedov”. The platform’s API describes this field as the account that released the item.

After the upgrade, the owner of these digital collectibles can:

• wear one next to their name, so the profile takes on its backdrop and symbol;
• send it to another user;
• list it on the in-app marketplace, which opened in May 2025 with prices in Stars;
• move it to the TON blockchain through Transfer > Send via Blockchain and trade it on Fragment or Getgems, where these collections have their own pages.

Collectors show them in the gifts section of their profile in the messaging app.

Snoop Dogg Telegram Gifts: The July 2025 Release

Five collections with Snoop’s name

The rapper’s release was not a single item. Five collections carry his creator line: Snoop Dogg, Swag Bag, Snoop Cigar, Low Rider and Westside Sign.

Each collectible page has a Quantity line, such as 582,250/593,781 for Snoop Dogg. The first number counts upgraded items. The platform’s API documentation defines the second one as all items of that type that are upgraded or can still be upgraded. By that count, Snoop Dogg is the largest of the five at 593,781 and Westside Sign is the smallest at 11,992. Together they add up to 987,266, close to the “nearly 1M” that Durov announced on launch day. Of these, 967,076 are upgraded.

30 minutes, $12 million and a song

Pavel Durov broke the news on 9 July 2025. In his words, Snoop Dogg’s drop of Telegram NFT collectibles sold out in 30 minutes and brought in $12 million. He said the designs drew on Snoop’s iconic style and promised blockchain minting and resale 21 days later.

The rapper’s channel called the collection official the next day. On 16 July 2025 it announced his track “Gifts”, credited as featuring Telegram, on streaming platforms.

Khabib’s Papakha NFT: A Partner Gift Sold by Auction

How the papakha auction worked

Khabib Nurmagomedov’s release, Khabib’s Papakha, used a new format. Instead of a first-come sale, the app ran an auction with bids in Stars. It started on 22 November 2025 at 17:00 UTC, which Durov announced as noon EST, and ended on 23 November at 18:05.

• Durov announced 29,000 papakhas across 290 fast 5-minute rounds, with 100 items per round.
• The API documentation describes extendable rounds, where a change among the top bids adds time to the current round. The whole auction took just over 25 hours.
• A bidder’s place decided the number, so the top bid of round 1 received #1.
• Under the auction rules on the official blog, bids that missed a round carried over to the next one, and leftover bids were refunded at the end.
• The auction page shows an average price of 10,100 Stars and 0 of 29,000 left.

Why a papakha

In his channel, Khabib described the papakha as more than a hat. For him it stands for where you come from, for respect and for discipline. He wrote that his father passed one to him and that anyone can now pass one to a friend, brother or mentor. Durov framed the collectibles around tradition, freedom and respect.

Khabib’s team shared the news on social media, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), and thanked the fans who took part. The launch also revived an old rivalry. Cageside Press reported on 26 November 2025 that Conor McGregor criticized the sale and that Khabib defended the collectibles. A later post forwarded in Khabib’s channel explained that early promo posts were replaced because fans kept asking to buy after the auction had closed.

Durov’s Cap and Durov’s Glasses: Named After the Founder

Neither collectible has a creator line. Both are the platform’s own items, named after Telegram founder Pavel Durov.

Durov’s Cap is one of the earliest limited items. The page of cap #1 records it being gifted on 24 November 2024, weeks before upgrades existed. Its Quantity line reads 4,710/4,774, so 4,710 caps are upgraded.

Durov’s Glasses arrived on 14 August 2025, the messenger’s birthday. Durov announced them as Durov’s Sunglasses at about $600 each, with a limit of three per user, and wrote that they sold out in 15 seconds. Their Quantity line reads 3,757/4,982.

UFC Strike: The Sports Follow-Up

Fifteen days after the papakhas, the same auction format returned for UFC Strike. The auction ran on 7 December 2025 from 18:00 to 22:15 UTC. All 60,000 items went at an average of 3,760 Stars.

Model names follow the UFC theme: collectible #1 shows the model “A. Pereira”. Like the Durov items, this collection has no creator line. By now 58,853 pieces are upgraded.

Celebrity Collections Side by Side

The Quantity line is copied from each collectible page on 26 September 2026: upgraded items first, then all items of the type that are upgraded or can still be upgraded. Current listings for each collection are in the TgSuperGifts catalog.

How to Check That a Celebrity Gift Is Genuine

A picture alone proves nothing. Open the collectible in the app or through its t.me/nft link and check four things:

1. The exact collection name, such as Khabib’s Papakha, and the item number.
2. The creator line: “by @snoopdogg” or “by @khabib_nurmagomedov” for the partner releases.
3. The Quantity line, whose second number was 29,000 for the papakha on 26 September 2026.
4. For an item already moved to TON, the NFT address, which you can look up in a TON blockchain explorer.

FAQ

How much is a Snoop Dogg NFT worth?

It depends on the model, backdrop and symbol. Inside the app, each collectible shows a Value field with an approximate resale price and the average sale price across its collection. Resale prices move with demand, so any figure is only a snapshot.

Can you still get Khabib’s Papakha on Telegram?

Not from the original sale: the auction page shows 0 of 29,000 left. Papakhas now change hands between owners. They are resold on the in-app marketplace, on TON marketplaces or in catalogs like ours, and owners can also transfer them to other users.

Is a collectible without a creator line fake?

Not by itself. Only partner releases show a creator line, such as “by @snoopdogg”. Durov’s Cap, Durov’s Glasses and UFC Strike are the platform’s own collections and show none. What counts is that the item opens in the app with the right collection name, number and Quantity line.