Soccer clubs around the world have been creating collaborative jerseys and fanwear by pairing with nonsports properties, including an expanding range and variety of licensed IPs, from musicians to anime. Their partners also increasingly include artists, as some recent examples illustrate:
- In May of this year, the Frida Kahlo brand and its German agent Bavaria Media Licensing announced a collection of fan merchandise with the German Football Association (Deutscher Fußball-Bund), the DFB’s merchandise partner Fanatics, and e-commerce site Spreadshirt. The products, which are timed to this month’s UEFA Women’s Europe 2025 competition, include t-shirts, sports shirts, hoodies, leggings, caps, bags, water bottles, mugs, and more. All the items feature the phrase “We are all Frida.” Both the team and the artist, according to the partners, embody strength, determination, and positive identity, and the collection is meant to celebrate diversity, self-expression, and empowerment.
- Casa Luzzati, the brand of late Italian painter, illustrator, animator, and master of other art fields, Emanuele Luzzati, paired with Italian football club Genoa CFC in April 2025 for a limited-edition capsule of two jerseys (home and away) and a t-shirt. The items featured Genoa’s name (Genova in Italian), colors, and other brand assets reimagined in the style of the Genoa-born artist. The licensee of Genoa CFC’s official kit, Kappa, manufactured the pieces, which also included its logo.
- Reko Rennie, a Kamilaroi artist, partnered with Football Australia and Nike in February 2025, marking the first collaboration between the governing body and a First Nations artist. The partnership, which emphasized football’s power to connect diverse communities, included new home and away kit designs for the Australian national men’s and women’s football teams, the CommBank Matildas (women) and the Subway Socceroos (men), as well as its senior, youth, para-athlete, and futsal teams. Available in men’s, women’s, and kids’ sizes, the pieces were sold to fans through Nike.com and other online and offline retailers. The jersey featured a design taken from a 2024 Rennie painting that was included as part of a recent retrospective exhibition of his work at the National Gallery of Victoria, along with other design elements such as a motif inspired by First Nations message sticks.
- Illustrator Tyler Mishá Barnett partnered with Angel City FC, the Los Angeles team of the National Women’s Soccer League, for a Black Joy Collection in June 2024. The scarf, t-shirt, and hat honored both Juneteenth and Black History and Black Futures Month (in February), and were designed to celebrate unity, strength, beauty, elevation, and creativity. They featured an image of three silhouettes of faces, a recurring motif in Barnett’s art, combined with design elements inspired by Ghanaian kente cloth to represent the attributes being celebrated. In keeping with club policy, 10% of proceeds went to the Niles Foundation, whose mission is to uplift and empower historically disinvested communities in L.A.
- Pop artist and sculptor Philip Colbert teamed with AS Roma in November 2023 for an apparel collection featuring his lobster character and the color palette of the club, known as the Giallorossi (the Yellow and Reds). Following an exhibition of 12 of Colbert’s lobster sculptures in different styles along the Via Veneto, a steel version dressed in the Roma colors was installed at the club’s home venue, Stadio Olimpico. A capsule collection of two t-shirts, a hoodie, and a replica figurine featured the Roma jersey-clad lobster along with graphics of Roma’s name and shield. An official jersey worn in a match sported Colbert-designed numbers, and custom jerseys of four of the team’s star players in this style were available for purchase at the stadium on match day and in the AS Roma online and offline stores thereafter.
The proliferation of pairings between global football clubs and artists reflects broader licensing business trends, as licensors of all types are looking to collaborate with artists from a variety of genres as a way to add a fresh spin to their properties.
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