The Arsenal 2025/26 away kit is out and once again, Adidas are drawing on the 90s.
With Premier League shirts for 2025/26 dropping steadily now, this new away top follows more 90s inspiration from the home shirt, which featured the club's iconic gothic A printed all over the shirt's base.
While the home was a very stripped-back effort, though, this new blue change strip is bolder and louder and it takes inspiration from some of the nicest Arsenal shirts of all time.
There's a familiar feel with the Arsenal 2025/26 away kit, though the shirt introduces a new twist on a classic design
It's been rumoured for a few months now that the Gunners would be drawing inspiration on their mid-90s Nike away shirts that used two-tone blue colour palettes and introduced the now iconic lightning bolt pattern that Arsenal have come to be synonymous with.
Appearing in the crest of the Royal Arsenal Gatehouse from where the club was originally formed in Woolwich the bolt was originally used by Nike, before becoming a staple of recent Adidas shirts, with the German manufacturer finding new ways to reinterpret the graphic.
While Adidas have done straighter remakes of the old Nike classics, this one feels genuinely like something a little more modern, though.
For a start, it's a bluer blue and while this is a familiar pattern, it's not a direct copy of anything that's been before: the red stripes on the shoulders give this one a vibrancy and the silver logos and name-sets give this one a freshness that you just didn't feel with the 2021/22 third strip, for example.
It almost feels like we've evolved with football kits from that absolute beauty: yes, this one is rooted in the culture of Arsenal's 90s lore but it's not a direct reference to those shirts. It's taking the ideas and patterns and doing something that feels quintessentially 2020s.
Clubs tend to go for a mix of orthodox and out-there with their kits each season: just look at the Gunners aping the Invincibles with the 2023/24 home shirt while donning a fluorescent contour car crash for the away (which fair's fair, became a bit of a cult classic, given its results.
With Arsenal going for a minimal-looking home shirt and drawing on historic patterns and colours for their upcoming third top, this away shirt is clearly the bolder one that older fans will tut and suggest is perhaps a touch too jazzy.
A new generation of Hale Enders have the potential to carve this one out as a future classic, however: perhaps future kits will draw on the 2025/26 edition for inspiration.
TOPICS
