As the new season approaches, there isn’t buckets to be excited about as a Leicester City fan, but I am always intrigued to see the new kits campaign ahead, and the stories that will attach themselves to these colours by the end of it. The white 2016/17 away inextricably linked with Marc Albrighton scoring our first goal in the Champions League, while the maroon shirt from 2020/21 will be forever known as the FA Cup-winning kit. This season’s shirts will be tied with Leicester’s downwards spiral, but let’s hope we at least look good as we try to rebuild.
Modern football, generally, is in a bad way. Fans are priced out from following their countries and clubs consistently through tickets and merchandise and you won’t be shocked to hear that Leicester are no different. For a template shirt with a Leicester City badge added, fans will have to pay more than £70 on the day of the release.
Over the past few years, the club has put minimal effort, care and love into the kit releases themselves too. We’ve got into the habit of throwing a player who isn’t good enough to be sold in the remainder of the window in the new shirt, in a hastily put together photoshoot. Maybe that comes down to how much the club is in disarray; Premier League teams with a budget can produce more engaging videos and shoots that get fans excited, with Manchester City being the best in the business. But even similarly troubled teams such as Sheffield Wednesday are engaging actively with their supporters around the release of their new shirt, partnering back up with Umbro.
I, as both a Leicester fan and football shirt obsessive, have attempted to do something about this. At the start of 2025 I began planning and preparing to host a pop-up shop, selling only modern and vintage Leicester shirts. We had over 200 shirts for sale at very reasonable prices (going off the near-extortionate rates of second-hand football shirt websites), and sold around 70% of them, giving fans an opportunity to get sought-after shirts easily and affordably. I’d love to do this again, and am working away at it to keep as many fans engaged in the club as possible, even if the modern shirts are a reminder that there are fewer and fewer reasons to be.
Long gone are the days where Leicester shirts were made by a local producer such as Admiral, whose factories were based in Wigston, and were adorned by a local sponsor, such as the iconic Walkers Crisps logo. We are now given templates by a massive company with a beer logo on the sleeve, and a faceless, shady betting sponsor on the front – which also, in Leicester’s case, isn’t even a straightforward deal, having to wait for months for the sponsor to be announced.
Fans are longing to be connected to the club again, and a decent marketing strategy would be an easy win. Have both fans and players model the shirts in iconic Leicester locations: Hamza on Burnmoor Street, Page in the away on the Saff and a new signing by the clock tower in the third. Easy and exciting.
Since 2018, Leicester City have had their kits produced by Adidas, with varying degrees of success. The general consensus of most Leicester fans I have spoken to about their tenure with Leicester is that, although a few shirts are now modern classics (the famous fast-selling 2019/20 pink and the FA Cup maroon), the vast majority are forgettable template shirts sold for a very high price. In fact, even those two were originally available as templates from Adidas, before they added the Leicester badge and sponsors.
Leicester are in line with other clubs’ merchandise pricing, with shirts starting from £70 at the beginning of the season, but inevitably dropping to half price by Christmas when sales are low. This has become the standard of modern football in the Midlands.
These shirts are a far cry from my favourite Leicester home shirts of all time, so here’s my top 3, in no particular order.
1998/00 Home
Massive Walkers logo, heavy collar and made by Fox Leisure – available in both short and long sleeve. As well as having fantastic memories of a League Cup win attached to it, the design of the shirt itself shows that beauty can be simple, if done right (not a copy and paste template).
1987/88 Home
Local make, local sponsor for local fans. I honestly think you cannot get better than that. The intricate parallelograms are fantastic. 10/10, no notes.
2015/16 Home
It will go down as not only our most iconic shirt, but one of the most iconic football shirts of all time. Simple gold details which ushered in the golden age of Leicester City. I do think there is something to be said for a simple design too, as fun as shirts like the 1990/92 home effort from Bukta was. Maybe simplicity and class are timeless?
With that in mind, as a shirt collector, here is my wish list for the upcoming season’s kit releases:
- Bring back long sleeves (such an easy win, there are few things that make me fall in love with a shirt more than long sleeves)
- Keep the same shirt for two seasons (this sounds unreasonable, but Premier League Brentford have been doing this for a while now – put more effort into a shirt to last longer, reducing the environmental impact of the club too!) I also think I’d be more inclined to pay the high prices if I know it’ll be around for longer.
- Bring back the running fox (this is rumoured to be on the way, so I’m really hopeful for this one)
- Bin off the betting sponsor (nothing more to be added for this)
- White shorts – please. It’s so, so simple. I don’t know where the obsession with blue shorts has come from but can it stop now please?
