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 collection 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.”
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 balances the on-field narratives and cultural references of each represented nation.
“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… when you go to a World Cup, they’re like, ‘my home kit needs to be Mexican green.’ That’s non-negotiable.”
The 22 home kits won’t make their competitive debuts this during this month’s international break but will be held in reserve until next summer’s tournament.
