Chelsea and Nike run it back for the Blues’ 25/26 third kit offering. Dubbed “the revival of an icon”, the black and grey design combines the west London club’s 04-06 away kit palette with the Swoosh’s iconic Total 90 template and the result speaks for itself.
Completing their regular set for the season, Chelsea and Nike have revealed the Blues’ 25/26 third shirt design, and it’s one that comes with a progressive nod to the past. It’s moniker of “the revival of an icon” is pretty self explanatory, as the design fuses the palette of the club’s 2004–06 away strip with Nike’s unmistakable Total 90 template. The outcome? A black-and-grey masterpiece that comes dangerously close to perfection.
This isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s a calculated collision of eras: a kit that binds two golden moments in Chelsea’s modern story. Back then, the 2004/05 campaign was a season of ignition – the club’s first ever Premier League title, the League Cup in tow, and a marker laid down on English football by José Mourinho’s revolution. Fast-forward 20 years, and Chelsea are once again riding the crest of a wave. The men’s side are fresh from lifting the FIFA Club World Cup and UEFA Conference League; the women swept up a domestic Treble. Two dawns, two decades apart, allied in one shirt.
The detailing is where the mythology lives. Black is the canvas, silver trims the collar, sleeves and socks, with a hit of royal blue threading it back to Stamford Bridge. It’s the same black-and-silver strip that once saw John Terry and Frank Lampard bare-chested, ripping shirts from shoulders in the chaos of the ‘Battle of Blackburn’. Now, it’s reimagined for a new Chelsea core.
And then there’s the Nike Total 90 DNA. If you know, you know. These were shirts built in an untamed age of football, when swagger ran as deep as strategy, and chaos shaped everything outside the white lines. Reigniting that T90 spirit, Chelsea’s third kit arrives loaded with audacity, unpredictability, and raw energy.
The shirt also completes what’s been dubbed a Total London trilogy for Nike this season. The home shirt took its cues from the capital’s architectural heritage, the away jersey leaned into an artistic mindset, and now the third finds its canvas in the cultural melting pot of west London at night. The backdrop for the launch is rooted in the city’s streets – suspended between eras, just like the shirt itself.
With a new wave of signings stepping into Chelsea blue this summer, it’s fitting that the third kit – blacked out, silvered up, and stitched with history – is the one that passes the torch. This is past meeting present. This is legacy built for the future.
Pick up the Chelsea 25/26 third shirt from 28 August at prodirectsport.com/soccer
