The 5 Best Football Shirts for the 2026/27 Season
A new season means new signings, new expectations and, just as importantly, a completely new set of shirts. The 2026/27 football shirts releases have already given us everything from throwbacks to unexpected colour choices and collaborations that feel closer to streetwear than traditional football apparel. Picking five is always going to cause arguments, but some have already separated themselves from the rest. From Kobe Bryant returning to Barcelona shirts to Real Madrid going green, these are our five favourites heading into the new season.
FC Barcelona – Away Kit
Barcelona and Kobe Bryant are back for a second season. The 2026/27 away shirt continues Barça’s collaboration with Nike’s Kobe brand, once again bringing basketball culture into one of football’s most famous shirts. The partnership is built around the competitive mentality shared by Kobe and Barça, with the club describing this year’s design as the second chapter of a collaboration centred on ambition and constantly pushing beyond your limits. More importantly, it does not feel like a logo simply placed onto a football shirt. Barça x Kobe is quickly becoming its own little corner of football culture, and the second release shows there is much more to the partnership than the novelty of year one.
Arsenal – Away Kit
There are certain Arsenal shirts that adidas can reference and immediately get people’s attention, and the Bruised Banana is probably top of that list. The 2026/27 away kit takes inspiration from the cult 1991–93 shirts without simply recreating it, bringing its famous yellow-and-black identity into a cleaner modern design. Arsenal have openly acknowledged the influence of the original, which remains one of the most recognisable shirts in English football culture more than three decades later. It is difficult to do nostalgia without making it feel like a remake, but this one gets the balance right.
Real Madrid – Away Kit
Real Madrid in dark green should not work this well. The 2026/27 away shirt brings back a colour combination the club has used before, but adidas has kept everything around it remarkably clean: an off-white collar and detailing, a subtle geometric pattern incorporating the club’s initials and the adidas Trefoil rather than the standard performance logo. It feels unmistakably retro without actually looking old. Real Madrid describe it as a contemporary reinterpretation of a historic colour combination, while SoccerBible’s reaction summed up why it stands out: some of Madrid’s best shirts have come away from the Bernabéu. In a summer full of loud designs, the best one might also be one of the simplest.
Bayern Munich – Away Kit
Bayern have gone backwards to move forwards with their new away shirt. adidas has looked towards the club’s kits of the 1990s and early 2000s, building the design around a predominantly white base with dark navy and red details. The Trefoil instead of the modern adidas performance logo makes the retro influence even clearer, while the classic club crest completes a shirt that could quite easily have come from another era. Bayern themselves describe the kit as a modern interpretation of some of their most iconic away looks, and that simplicity is exactly what makes it work.
Inter Milan – Away Kit
Inter and Nike went somewhere completely different. The new away shirt takes inspiration from baseball, translating details associated with the sport into an Inter kit rather than returning to another old football design. It is clean and understated at first glance, but the baseball influence gives it an identity that makes more sense the longer you look at it. It is one of the standout releases of the summer, and it is exactly the sort of shirt that works beyond the stadium too. For a club from one of the world’s great fashion cities, that feels appropriate.
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If you want to read more about football shirts, check out our article on the best World Cup kits 2026.
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