Clash kits and LaLiga go hand in hand Aesthetic incidents involving Barcelona, Real Madrid and others
Lamine Yamal? Kylian Mbappé? No, the real protagonists of the 2025/26 season in La Liga so far have been the kit clashes. In the first two matchdays, in fact, we’ve seen surprising aesthetic solutions to prevent teams from taking the field in kits that are too similar. Emblematic is the case of Barcelona: none of the three kits designed by Nike for the new season proved usable. Thus, in the first two away games, necessary while waiting for the work at the Camp Nou to be completed, the Blaugrana were forced to bring back the fluorescent green kit from last season. In the debut against Mallorca, the choice seems to have depended mainly on the incompatibility with the home kit of the hosts, characterized by black shorts and socks: Barça’s new away kit dedicated to Kobe Bryant currently does not have an alternative set of light shorts to replace the official purple ones. In the second game, the situation repeated itself and not even the new orange Total 90 kit, inspired by the Sextete, would have solved the problem.
Even more surprising was what we saw on Sunday night in Oviedo with Real Madrid “ruining” their traditional all-white kit. Here too it was an emergency situation due to the fact that both the Away jersey and the Third kit would have created an aesthetic clash with the home side’s dark blue shirt. Hence the decision to pair the camiseta blanca with socks and shorts borrowed from the away jersey. Obviously, this is not the very first time that Real Madrid has broken up their all-white kit with the away jersey. In the past it happened in the Champions League against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge; other examples point to a Copa del Rey match against Alicante in 2007 and, more generally, between 1925 and 1926 Real Madrid wore black shorts in homage to Corinthian, the most famous non-professional team in England.
Not just Barcelona and Real Madrid: cases of kit clash in La Liga haven’t spared the other big clubs either. Valencia, for example, away in Pamplona against Osasuna, had to leave their traditional black shorts at home and take the field in an unusual all-white kit. It was a forced choice: the away shirt, in fact, is solid red like the Navarrese side’s, while the third picks up the colors of the flag of the Valencian Community—yellow and orange—equally incompatible. Similar problems for Atlético Madrid, who on the opening day of the league at Espanyol’s ground could not show off the blue away kit. The solution? An alternative combination with red socks and shorts under the classic red-and-white shirt, instead of the light-blue socks and shorts seen in the season opener at the Metropolitano. Nor was Sevilla spared: in their debut against Athletic Club they had to give up the black socks from the home strip for white ones. The alternative? None, since the red away and the black third would have generated a kit clash with the hosts.
