Some kits are famous for a design. Newcastle United’s is famous for a pattern. Black and white vertical stripes, black shorts, black socks: it has been the same for more than 120 years, worn by Milburn and Macdonald and Shearer, by teams that won the league before the First World War and by a team that ended a seventy-year wait for a domestic trophy in 2025. It is one of the few kits in English football that a child could draw from memory. Which is exactly why the 2026/27 version has caused such an argument. This is the story of the Newcastle United kit, and of what happens when somebody decides to change the stripes.
Before the stripes
Newcastle United were formed in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, and for their first decade they wore a variety of colours, including red and white. The switch to black and white stripes came in 1904, and as with most kit decisions of that era the reason is disputed. One story links the colours to a local monastery; another to a magpie that nested at St James’ Park; another to the club’s directors simply liking the look. Whatever the truth, the timing was perfect. Within five years of adopting the stripes Newcastle had won the league three times, in 1905, 1907 and 1909, and they reached five FA Cup finals between 1905 and 1911.
Milburn and the 1950s
The stripes were worn for the club’s greatest cup era in the early 1950s, when Newcastle won the FA Cup in 1951, 1952 and 1955. Jackie Milburn, the centre-forward from Ashington whose statue stands outside the ground, scored in the 1951 and 1955 finals. The shirts of that period were heavy cotton with broad stripes and a plain collar, and the replicas of them sell steadily to supporters who never saw him play.
Supermac, Keegan and the first sponsors
The 1970s brought Malcolm Macdonald and the 1974 FA Cup final, and the 1980s brought Kevin Keegan as a player, briefly, and the arrival of shirt sponsorship. Newcastle Breweries appeared on the front from 1980, and the blue star of Newcastle Brown Ale, which returned in the mid-1990s and stayed until 2000, became as much a part of the kit’s identity as the stripes themselves.
The Entertainers and adidas
The most loved Newcastle shirts belong to the mid-1990s. Keegan returned as manager in 1992, took the club up in 1993 and built a side, Beardsley, Ferdinand, Ginola, Asprilla, that finished second in 1996 and became known as the Entertainers. adidas made the kits from 1995, and the 1995 to 1997 home shirt, with its three stripes down the sleeves and the Newcastle Brown Ale logo, is the design most supporters picture when they think of the club. Alan Shearer arrived in 1996 for a world record fee, wore that shirt, and went on to score 206 goals for Newcastle, a club record that still stands.
The wilderness and the takeover
Between Shearer’s retirement in 2006 and 2021 the stripes were worn through two relegations, the Mike Ashley years and a rotating cast of sponsors, Northern Rock, Virgin Money, Wonga and Fun88 among them. Puma made the kits for most of that period and Castore for its final three seasons. The Saudi-backed takeover in October 2021 changed the club’s trajectory, and a return to adidas in 2024 was widely read as a statement that Newcastle again considered themselves among the elite. The first adidas shirt of the new era was worn to Wembley in March 2025, where Newcastle beat Liverpool 2-1 in the League Cup final to win their first domestic trophy since 1955.
2026/27: the disrupted stripe
Which brings us to the argument. For 2026/27 adidas has produced what the club calls a “disrupted stripe” pattern: the black and white bands are broken and offset rather than running cleanly from shoulder to hem, with a pop of colour at the crew neck and a magpie on the back of the neck. The shirt was launched in June without a front-of-shirt sponsor, the deal with Sela having ended, and Knox Hydrate was added later in the month on a three-year agreement. Black shorts and socks complete the kit, and the player version uses adidas’s Climacool+ fabric.
Reaction has been sharp. One widely shared ranking of all twenty new Premier League home kits placed it last, describing it as a barcode, and a section of the support agrees. Others argue that the club has produced the same shirt for a century and that an occasional experiment is healthy. Both sides are right, which is why the debate will run all season.
Robson, Shearer and the Champions League years
Between the Entertainers and the takeover there was one more golden period for the shirt. Bobby Robson, a Geordie and a boyhood supporter, managed the club from 1999 to 2004 and took Newcastle into the Champions League twice, with Shearer still scoring and Craig Bellamy, Kieron Dyer and Laurent Robert around him. The adidas shirts of that spell carried the NTL logo and then Northern Rock, and the 2002 to 2003 design was worn for the win over Juventus at St James’ Park that remains the club’s best European night of the modern era. Robson’s statue stands outside the Gallowgate End alongside Shearer’s.
Change kits and the Trefoil
Newcastle’s away shirts have always been where the club experiments, from the blue and green hoops of the mid-1990s to a run of yellow, grey and maroon designs in the Puma years. The 2026/27 change kits follow adidas’s current approach across its Premier League clubs of using the Originals Trefoil logo on away and third shirts, a nod to the brand’s 1980s designs, and they have been received far more warmly than the home shirt. For supporters who dislike the disrupted stripes, the away kit is the shirt they will be buying this season.
Why the stripes are hard to change
Newcastle’s problem is a rare one. Most clubs can redesign a kit and keep the identity, because the identity lives in the colour. Newcastle’s identity lives in the pattern. Broaden the stripes, narrow them, add pinstripes, and supporters will grumble but accept it. Break them, and the shirt stops reading as Newcastle from a distance, which for a club whose whole visual language is built on being recognisable from the far end of St James’ Park is a real cost.
The 2026/27 kit will be worn by a team that has spent heavily and expects to compete, and if it is worn to a trophy the design will be forgiven, as the club’s history shows: the 1996 shirt was not universally loved when it was released either. But the lesson of the last 120 years is simple. The stripes are not decoration. They are the club. For more on kit design, colour and the stories behind them, explore the Kit section on Science & Football.