Elvis Pink to Exhausted Ombre: The Hits and Misses of Football's 2026-27 Kit Season

Football's annual fashion show is upon us. As the Premier League kicks off on Friday, debutants like Christos Tzolis and Victor Muñoz will pull on their clubs' shiny new strips alongside millions of fans — and as The Guardian's kit survey makes clear, the 2026-27 collection is the usual mixed bag of instant classics and outright misfires. The summer's World Cup offered an early glimpse at football's sartorial direction. Co-hosts the USA delivered some of the tournament's loveliest looks, proving patriotic design doesn't have to mean lazy design. Elsewhere, however, the offerings were about as inspiring as a goalless draw. Back on domestic soil, the extremes are starker than ever. Manchester City, serial winners on the pitch, have produced a loser in the fashion stakes with their ombre effort. The gradient fade — once a fresh idea — now feels, in The Guardian's withering assessment, positively 'exhausted' as a look in 2026. When your shirt appears to be running out of energy before the season even starts, it may be time to return to the drawing board. At the other end of the spectrum sits Sunderland's delightful curveball. The Black Cats have teamed up with Elvis Presley — or rather, his estate — for a pink away shirt that tips its hat to the supporters' long-standing unofficial anthem, 'Can't Help Falling in Love.' The Guardian hails it as the most surprising but successful collaboration since Olivia Rodrigo joined forces with The Cure's Robert Smith. It is kit design as cultural storytelling: rooted in genuine fan tradition rather than marketing-department guesswork, and proof that the boldest ideas often hide in plain sight on the terraces. Between those poles, this season's wider wardrobe navigates familiar battlegrounds. There's the return of 'Pro Evo chic' — that pixelated, early-2000s video-game aesthetic that nostalgia-hungry supporters can't resist. There are throwbacks done right, honoring heritage without simply photocopying the club archive. And then there are stripes: football's most divisive design device, deployed this term with both elegance and criminal abandon, from classic patterns to so-called 'barcode' designs so thin and dense they look ready for the supermarket checkout. With six of the season's best and worst shirts surveyed in the full piece, one truth emerges: in an era when every club chases a viral kit drop, authenticity still wins. Whether it's Elvis pink on Wearside or a perfectly judged retro nod, the shirts supporters truly cherish are the ones that feel like they belong to them — not to a trend report. As the new campaign begins, fans will hope their team's football is more Sunderland than City. (Source: Guardian Football)