Counting down the ten worst new shirts of the 2025/26 season - from Fulham to Manchester City.
A new season is upon us at last, and with it another chance to pass judgement on the appalling kits being forced upon the fans of unsuspecting teams around the world – and this year’s countdown of the Top 10 worst new kits in the world includes some absolute shockers.
Below are ten kits that range from the insipid to the garish to the eye-gouging, all of them crimes against fundamental aesthetics – and unfortunately, there are quite a few English kits in there.
If you need a palate cleanse after reading this then you can also check out our list of the Top 10 best new kits of the 2025/26 season as well, but for now? Prepare your eyes for an onslaught…
10-9: Fulham & Preston efforts make our hall of shame
10. Fulham (away)
There probably is a time and a place for neon green, but nobody has worked out when and where it is yet – and we’re no closer to an answer based on this garish number from Fulham. It looks like something Michael van Gerwen would wear when he steps up to the oche. Hard on the eyes, and a senseless waste of a rather sharply-designed collar.
9. Preston North End (home)
Look, it’s not the sponsor’s logo that we take objection to. In fact, it’s the best thing about this kit, which isn’t just astonishingly dull but also looks insultingly cheap. Have Castore actually made a football kit here, or just given Preston a bunch of cheap t-shirts that they found in the sale section of Sports Direct? The phrase “stick a potato company on it and call it a day” was definitely uttered in what we assume was the first and last design meeting involved in the creation of this kit.
8. Barcelona (fourth)
There are a few reason that this kit annoys us, and the ugly zig-zag lines aren’t the worst of them, although they are fairly dreadful. It’s also the fact that this shirt - dubbed the El Clásico kit - supposedly pays tribute to the legendary 3-0 win over Real Madrid in which Ronaldinho was given a standing ovation by rival supporters but looks nothing like the jersey that Barcelona wore in that match. But what really grinds our gears is that a club having a “fourth kit”, which is basically a bad redesign of their home shirt, which will be worn in precisely two game, is the kind of fan-gouging, money-grubbing nonsense we wish wasn’t a part of the sport.
7. Schalke 04 (third)
Mein gott. Schalke’s third kit this season looks like the inside of an eyelid after staring at the sun for much too long. Bright orange isn’t easy to pull off at the best of times, but the ‘seared retina’ colour palette takes this to a new level of ugliness. At least with most of the kits here, you can sort of see what they were going for – this feels like Adidas’ designer let their 11-year-old child do it to encourage their creative talents.
6. Bahia (special edition)
This is a bit of a cheat, because it isn’t a mainline kit that Brazilian side Bahia will regularly wear during games – but it merits inclusion in this list because it’s quite amazing just how budget they’ve managed to make an apparently official tie-in with the Superman movie look. This has the vibe of a cheap Hallowe’en costume bought from a Chinese drop-shipping company which comes in a plastic bag marked ‘Special Man!’ or something. Absolutely rubbish.
5-1: Manchester City shirt among the worst of the worst
5. Inter Milan (home)
This should be one of the easiest assignments in kit design. An unmissable open goal. We almost have to credit Nike with finding a way to screw it up so badly. The wobbly, uneven neon-blue lines are an awful variation on a classic look. Why did anyone look at some of the classic Inter kits of years past and wonder what they would look like if they were actually a Magic Eye picture? Apparently the gaps between the stripes are meant to spell ‘Inter’, too, which we still can’t actually see despite having known about it for well over a month.
4. Bayern Munich (home)
We don’t necessarily blame Adidas for thinking that Bayern’s traditional look could do with some spicing up, but this a massive miss. The white splodge dripping down from the collar look’s like Santa’s beard. It somehow actually manages to look considerably worse when you see it in use, too. A horrible kit, and probably enough to make Harry Kane start pining for home.
3. Forest Green Rovers (home and away)
Now we’re into the really bad stuff. Forest Green have always done things differently, but trying to win games through violent distraction tactics feels a little beneath the high ethical bar they set themselves. The colours are an assault of decent eyeballs everywhere. The print actually makes us root for the leopard’s extinction. Somehow, the white sleeves are the worst thing about it. A kit designed by someone who needs to be stopped.
2. TSV Hartberg (home)
Depending on your perspective, this is either an inventive way to generate some extra sponsor’s revenue or a visual demonstration of the excesses of capitalism. Either way, it’s hideous. There are, apparently, 23 sponsors on the kit in total, and we suspect that most of the Austrian outfit’s players won’t be too thrilled that one of them is called Spermbooster. Right there on the stomach. This isn’t a football kit, it’s something a semi-professional racing car driver would be forced to wear.
1. Manchester City (third)
Not just the worst kit of the year, but one of the worst of all time. A monstrosity that makes us pray for blindness until next August. You can sort of see how the first pitch meeting would arrive at the idea of depicting a drizzly day in Manchester, but instead of quashing the concept, Puma decided to add some neon yellow just to make sure that an already ugly kit contains a vomit-inducing component.
Then there’s the tie-dyed, centred club crest. The droplets that look they were designed in Microsoft Paint. An absolutely awful kit which we must assume is part of a social experiment to find out just how far Manchester City fans can be pushed before they break down into tears. And if this is part one of that plan...
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