Our list of the Top 10 best new football kits for the 2025/26 season - from Arsenal to Almería and from Sunderland to Sorrento.
One of the problems with football is that very few teams can realistically hope to actually win a trophy in any given season – but every team around the world, no matter how big or small, how rich or poor, can be the best dressed.
Most teams have now released their new kits for the coming 2025/26 season, and as always there are beauties and stinkers, fashion disasters and jerseys you could take down the catwalk in Milan, although the Inter Milan home kit certainly isn’t one of them.
But do the biggest clubs have the best shirts, or are football’s most fashionable threads an egalitarian triumph? Our Top 10 of the best kits of the new season features giants and minnows alike, and no shortage of beauties. Let’s see what the hipsters will be wearing for the next 12 months…
10-6: Arsenal & Manchester United among the big names with the best kits
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Watching Manchester United play football wasn’t an especially pleasurable experience last season, so the club have spent the summer working on ways to make them a little easier on the eye – most fans would probably prefer that they signed a world-class midfielder, but they’ve taken the slightly easier path of sorting out some rather nice shirts.
The home jersey is decent rather than spectacular and the dark grey third top features some very nice trim, but it’s the pale pink, purple and white away kit and it’s snowflake pattern that gets our vote as the best by a fair distance. Imaginative without being loud, there’s a fair chance that it’s better than any of the performances we’ll see from the players that wear it.
9. Deportivo de la Coruña (third)
Kappa have come up with a corker here – Deportivo may not be quite as significant of a force in Spanish football as they were back in the Nineties, but they seem to know that that’s no excuse not to dress nice and sharp. Lovely colours, immaculate detailing, and a kit that’s busy without losing a shred of elegance in the process. The Galicians may not be Superdepor any more, but they remain super stylish.
If we were ranking clubs by the average quality of all of their primary kits for the coming campaign, then Arsenal might well be number one – all three are excellent and we love the blue ‘lightning’ away look, but the third shirt gets our vote as the very best. Simple, immaculate of collar and blessed with inch-perfect red and gold trim which makes it look like a great lost AS Roma jersey, this design couldn’t be any cleaner if Trinny & Susannah were given an hour with it.
7. Paris Saint-Germain (home)
The European champions return to action with a shirt that’s almost as fun to watch as their front three. Nike’s creative and lively take on PSG’s traditional red stripe could easily have ended up being over the top, but instead contrives to be intricate and subtle at the same time, with the white trim down the edges being an inspired touch. We already saw this top at the Club World Cup, and it’s every bit as gorgeous in action as it is in all the carefully-posed marketing photos.
6. Pumas (home)
This will be the last time that Nike gets to design Pumas’ shirts before the Mexican outfit rather appropriately hand over to Puma, and they’ve gone out with a bang. Picking between the home and away kits, both pictured above, is a challenge that we wish we didn’t have to undertake, but we’re picking the white home effort with the gloriously-stylised big cat poking its head through the Boca-esque yellow and blue stripes as the best. One slight gripe – the triangle around the puma’s head makes it look like a lion with its mane. Splitting hairs, perhaps.
5-1: New Sunderland kit among the world’s very best
5. Minnesota United (third)
Major League Soccer gets a fair amount of stick in the UK, but let’s give them a ton of credit when it comes to kit design – as always, US football is absolutely flush with vibrant kits, and this beauty from Minnesota is the best of the bunch. The retro colour-faded triangle patterning across the shoulders would be good on its own, but the white and orange trim on the sleeves and collar is absolutely perfect. Having a first-rate club crest doesn’t hurt, either. A stunner.
As a newly-promoted team who scraped their way up via the play-offs, it’s extremely likely that Sunderland get relegated from the Premier League this season – but god, they’re going to look smart doing it. The alternate crest is tremendous but it’s the lighthouse detailing repeated across the shirt in a checker-board pattern that really elevates this towards excellence. 20th place will never look better, and it’s our pick for the best from the Premier League.
3. Hamburger SV (home)
This beauty is apparently inspired by a mid-Nineties kit which they only actually wore twice, but the basic template will be familiar to anyone who watched the German national team in that era – and Adidas’ modern update is simply scintillating. If ever Hamburg deserve to finally end their exile in the 2.Bundesliga, it’s wearing this.
2. Almería (away)
Macron have absolutely smashed it here. Modelled, apparently, on traditional Andalucian ceramics, this Almería shirt features a design we wouldn’t just be happy to wear out and about but to use as our wallpaper and bedding as well. The floral pattern is inspired, the colours are glorious, the trim a delight, and in most years, this would probably be our very favourite. But while Macron may have nailed this, they have made one minor mistake - not being Ezeta.
1. Sorrento (away)
Look, putting Ezeta in these lists almost feels like cheating. Ever since the Italian indie kit manufacturers exploded into our consciousness last year, they’ve been putting out bespoke kits that blow everything else in football away, and we could have picked pretty much any of the tops they’ve designed for lower-league Italian sides as our number one – but we reckon Sorrento get the very best of the bunch this season.
We very slightly prefer the Serie C side’s white away shirt, with its almost heraldic floral pattern and its centred club badge, but the red and black home top isn’t exactly hard on the eye. Italian football has always been at the forefront of footballing fashion – Ezeta have simply pushed the boundaries back further than anyone before them. 11/10 and no notes other than “we want one”.
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