Newcastle United and Adidas reunited last year after a decade and a half apart, and I thought that the pair’s 2024-25 kits were some of the best in the Premier League last year. So how do the 2025-26 home kits stack up?
The Magpies’ new kits feature Newcastle’s traditional white-and-black vertical stripes. From a distance they appear to be blurry, but if you look closely you’ll see it’s actually a repeating pattern — Adidas and the club call it the shepherd’s check, which you may know as the Border Tartan.
It’s certainly a unique and intriguing, and the club says that it’s “undeniably Newcastle.” I love stuff like this on soccer kits — taking historic local textile patterns and implementing them into the kit almost always makes the kit feel more connected to the community it’s meant to represent.
It’s not all good, however. Last year, Adidas forced these godawful swooshes going from the front to back onto nearly every club (though it wasn’t so bad with the Magpies). This year Adidas’s thing is going to be piping that runs down the shoulders and torso of the jersey. It’s a less annoying element than the back swooshes from this year, and it will actually looks good for some clubs if the leaked images for Liverpool are to be believed, but here Adidas went with a light blue.
I can understand why they’d want to get a splash of color in here (black-and-white vertical stripes can be drab), I just don’t really dig the shade of blue. It would’ve been more tolerable had it been held only on the sleeve cuffs and collar, but using that blue for the front piping just seems like overkill to me.
Also diminishing the overall look here is the bright yellow sleeve ad, which feels highly inappropriate for any Premier League team, let alone one with the pedigree of Newcastle United. It looks like something out of the Austrian Bundesliga.
Newcastle United’s traditional black shorts and socks complete the new home kit.
Recently, clubs throughout the world have been using their final home game of the season to wear next season’s kits. This has been one of my least favorite developments in the kit world, though it’s obvious as to why clubs do it (to drum up fan interest for the new look). Unfortunately, Newcastle United are doing that for this kit — the club will debut their new home kit today at St. James’ Park against Everton. Kickoff will be at 11 eastern.
More images of the 2025-26 Newcastle United home kit are below. Tell me your thoughts in the comments.
Taking a classic look and ruining it for the sake of new jersey sales. Hideous.
Not a Newcastle fan by any means but these are pretty sweet. I like the blue accents. I think there is just enough of it to add a spark to the shirt. I wish Adidas would do something interesting with MUFC’s kit. That ad, though. Woof.
Speaking of ad patches… I hadn’t seen the Mariners play in a long time. Watched some of their game yesterday in Houston. That ginormous red ad looked like a damn billboard on their sleeves. Just horrible.
Stripes and curved-edged panels are never a good combo. Add the piping and woof. The fact that these templates change, often significantly, year after year disproves any claim that they’re about maximizing performance such that a team without that particular template would be at a competitive advantage due to inferior equipment. If that claim were even close to true, then template change from year to year would be minor and incremental most of the time. Not radically different every year. So teams with a dominant visual element like stripes or hoops should be given an alternate template that does not clash with the presence of that dominant visual element.
The things I like about this kit, I absolutely love. But the template elements are so poor that I’m not sure I can award it a passing grade. If Newcastle has notable success next season – a decent possibility! – then in 10 or 20 years they’ll throw back to this season’s kit in some way, and the element they recycle as a tribute will definitely not be the curvy side panels or side panel piping.
As a Newcastle fan I think they are decent. There are only so many ways to make a strong Newcastle jersey with their basic core design. I do wish Premier League teams didn’t change their kits every year. It leads to being forced to try new things with teams that are known for their traditional look which usually doesn’t work. The worst thing is the way the stripe runs brough the crest (half white background half black background) makes the crest look unbalanced. As for the shade of blue I like the shade if we have to have a trim color which we shouldn’t. It is the blue off the banner of the crest. Since the club have already announced there will be a new crest for 26/27 I understand wanting to tie the jersey into the crest colors.
Now 3 ads instead of the usual ugly 2!?!? It’s becoming Nascar.
Not the biggest football (soccer, around these parts) fan. But DAMN, the uniforms are sweet!
The Toon have had similar patterns on the stripes for many of their home shirts for a while now, it’s not that unique, just this time, the pattern is a lot larger than it was back in 1995, the first time the pattern was used.
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