World Cup 2026 jerseys: Adidas unveils new high-tech kits for 22 nations ahead of next summer’s tournament

Adidas has embraced the spirit of tradition with its latest kit release, unveiling 22 home kits on Wednesday that the brand designed with the 2026 World Cup in mind.

The drop includes the home kits for six nations who have already qualified for next summer’s tournament, host nation Mexico and reigning world champions Argentina, as well as several World Cup hopefuls like Spain and Germany. It is the largest load of kits Adidas has ever designed for a World Cup, true to form for the biggest edition of the tournament after FIFA expanded the competition to include 48 teams.

The new batch of kits are made from the lightest fabric Adidas has created, just in time for what could be the hottest World Cup on record.

“It’s around Climacool+ and every federation is going to have an authentic kit so it’s going to have that level of performance in the home and away kits,” Mateo Kossman, Adidas football’s senior product manager, told CBS Sports. “In terms of performance, no compromise there and the fabric that we use is an engineered body-mapping 3D structure that, depending on the area of the body, depending on the fabric, allowing for better breathability for the jersey.”

Between the creation of performance-focused fabric and the design itself, the layered process to create the World Cup kits took three years, requiring multiple steps of collaboration between Adidas and the federations before locking in the looks.

“The first year is the base style team who does the patterns of the jersey,” Sergio Mareco, Adidas’ senior designer of football apparel, said. “They need to develop fabric, they need to develop new trims and then in the second year, we get the briefings from the federations so it’s not that they take too long to design something. It’s just more like the approvals so we design the jersey, we get the first approval, make the first sample so then the whole process takes three years.”

Adidas’ design team takes a two-pronged approach to crafting the story of a kit, striking a balance between the team’s on-field narratives and references to the nation the jersey represents. That process is easier for some teams than others — take for example Argentina, who will return to the World Cup next year as the reigning champions. The brand blended the blue tones from the jerseys they wore each time they won the World Cup — 1978, 1986 and 2022 — for their latest look, staying true to the classic striped design while creating a physical embodiment of the national team’s storied history.

The real challenge of designing a home jersey in a World Cup year, very simply, is that it’s a World Cup year. Federations lean on tradition in these years more so than any other, increasing the difficulty on the task of creating a unique look.

“The federations, they are very clear that they need to be represented very, very clear when it comes to the colors of a World Cup,” Kossman said. “For example, when we work with Mexico — we love working with Mexico because they have such a rich culture and they’re not scared to try things, to explore all the colors that they have in their culture and we bring kits. We brought, for example, kits in ’24 where we inspired ourselves in fantastic creatures from the Mexican culture and then we had a home kit that was burgundy with dark green details. …  When you go to a World Cup, they’re like, ‘my home kit needs to be Mexican green.’ That’s non-negotiable.”

That said, Adidas’ design team has found ways to put a modern twist on classic looks.

“In each country, we have our local markets who grab that information from the federation,” Mareco said. “For example, Colombia, they wanted to talk about magic realism. That is a literature movement so it’s about the yellow butterflies. Belgium, for example, are the Red Devils so we have the flames and the trident so we bring this artwork because it’s linked to a nickname of the federation or a story of the country and then we mix together.”

The 22 home kits won’t make their competitive debuts this during this month’s international break, a mix of World Cup qualifiers and friendlies, but will be held in reserve until next summer’s tournament.