Writer: Asad S.
The roar of the Etihad would soon echo a little differently. Puma has let loose generative AI into the beautiful game, giving Manchester City supporters the unprecedented power to design the club’s 2026 kit themselves. For the first time, the famous crest on City’s jersey will pair with a pattern born from the imaginations of the fans who sing for it.
How Puma’s AI Kit Design Platform Works
Puma’s AI Creator tool is a custom platform built on a Stable Diffusion generative AI model. After more than a year of development in partnership with creative tech firms FTR Studio and DeepObjects, Puma created a system that puts advanced text-to-image AI in fans’ hands. Using the tool, any City fan can enter a textual description of their dream kit design and watch as the AI brings that vision to life on a 3D jersey mockup. The platform isn’t limited to just random outputs, either. It offers style presets and editing features so users can guide the look and refine details.
How fans create an AI-generated kit design
Fans begin by signing up on the Puma AI Creator site wherein registration grants a set of free design credits to experiment. They then follow a simple process to bring their concept to life:
- Enter a text prompt describing the desired jersey look. For example, a sky-blue background with electric lightning bolt patterns.
- Select a visual style filter for the AI’s interpretation. Options include themes like abstract, emotive brushstrokes, or dream visions, among others.
- Hit create and the AI will produce four different kit designs based on the prompt and style, displayed on a virtual City shirt.
- Tweak the design by adjusting the collar type (round neck, v-neck, etc.), changing trim and accent colors, and even modifying the placement of logos or the club badge. This way, the final creation not only looks unique but also meets practical kit requirements.
- Submit the design. Fans can save their favorite designs and submit up to two entries into the official contest. Each AI generation uses one credit, and each user is limited to two contest submissions to keep things fair.
Merchandising teams still need shade runs, on-model comps, and retail-ready assets before moving forward. This is where color tooling comes in. Many apparel stacks now use an AI nudes generator. In fashion, “nude” simply means skin-tone shades. The tool works a bit like Photoshop’s color-fill, but automatic. It quickly creates a wide range of skin tones and applies them across base layers, compression gear, and lifestyle looks. The result is fewer revisions, faster approvals, and colorways that stay true to the fan-voted design.
On the retail side, the outputs also come with standardized tags. These treat “nude” correctly as a shade, which helps marketplaces and ad platforms keep listings consistent across product pages and campaign slots. The result is a smoother path from a winning fan concept to store shelves and sponsored placements. Not to mention the inclusivity and speed built in for Puma and City’s partners. Merchandising teams still need shade runs, on-model comps, and retail-ready assets before anything can move forward.
From Fans’ Screens to the Football Ground
Once the AI Creator platform opened up, the response from the City fanbase was massive.
The use of AI generation unlocked styles that a human designer might not have imagined. Some fans experimented with surreal or futuristic themes, while others blended city landmarks and cultural symbols into abstract patterns. Because the AI can iterate so quickly, in just a few weeks, supporters worldwide generated over 180,000 unique kit designs on the system.
Overall, the platform recorded more than 1.6 million fan ratings on these designs, as users browsed and gave feedback on each other’s creations. By the submission deadline of December 20, 2024, Puma and Manchester City had a vibrant gallery of ideas to choose from.
To identify the finalists, fan votes and expert judges combined forces. Puma and City kit experts reviewed the top-rated fan submissions and shortlisted ten designs that best captured creativity and City’s culture. Those ten AI-assisted designs became finalists for the club’s 2026/27 official third kit. In late January 2025, a global fan vote opened, allowing supporters everywhere to pick their favorite from the top ten. By January 29, the poll closed, bringing the contest to its climax as one fan’s imagination earned the ultimate prize. The winning design will be kept under wraps until it’s revealed in summer 2026 ahead of the season, but Puma has confirmed that the victorious fan-created kit will be produced and worn by the team on the pitch.
In a first for the club, the Premier League champions will eventually take the field in a jersey dreamed up by a fan and rendered by AI.
Not content to wait until 2026 to showcase the technology, Puma and City gave a sneak preview of AI-designed gear on the pitch much sooner. Club players Ederson, Stefan Ortega, and Rico Lewis got hands-on with the AI Creator tool themselves, and together they designed a special goalkeeper kit using generative AI. The result was a colorful keeper jersey inspired by the net of a goal.
This AI-generated keeper kit made history on January 25, 2025, when Manchester City’s goalkeepers wore it during a match against Chelsea, marking the first time an AI-designed football kit was ever worn in a professional game. A limited run of the AI-created goalie shirts even went on sale to the public that day, giving some fans the chance to own a piece of this history.
The Trend of Fan-Designed Kits
Across the football world, teams have been exploring ways to let supporters contribute to kit designs even if not yet with AI. In recent seasons a trend of fan-designed jerseys has emerged.
Italian club Fiorentina and kit maker Kappa ran a contest where fans helped create a special fourth kit that eventually debuted in a match. Elsewhere, France’s Red Star FC and Germany’s Borussia Dortmund have also launched similar initiatives inviting fan submissions for new jerseys. Even giants like Juventus jumped on the idea. In early 2023 Juve opened a #JuventusYourJersey challenge for fans to design a shirt, though with the caveat that the winning concept might not actually be worn by the players. These contests showed that supporters are eager to share their artistic passion for the club, producing some striking concept kits in the process.
Nevertheless, what sets the Puma x Man City project apart is the use of generative AI to supercharge this fan creativity. Previous fan design contests relied on individuals manually crafting designs, often using Photoshop or template apps. By contrast, Puma’s AI Creator lowers the barrier to entry dramatically. You don’t need graphic design skills or expensive tools, just an idea and a keyboard. This means the pool of potential designers expands to virtually anyone willing to give it a try. The result is not just a handful of fan submissions, but an explosion of hundreds of thousands of AI-augmented ideas, all with a consistent presentation that makes them easy to compare and evaluate.
The Future of Football Fashion
As we await the reveal of the winning fan-designed 2026 kit, it’s hard not to imagine how this experiment could ripple beyond Manchester. AI has already lowered the barrier to entry for design. The next step might see fans co-designing entire seasonal ranges, regional variations, or even match-specific kits generated in real time. If Puma’s platform can work for a single contest, the same approach could become a permanent feature of the game.
Looking ahead, it opens new possibilities across sport, fashion, and fan engagement, but also raises important questions. Can clubs maintain a coherent identity if anyone can generate designs? How will AI-driven creativity be responsibly curated to protect heritage and ensure quality? Already, Puma and City have blended AI with oversight and community voting to strike the right balance. Whether this becomes the blueprint for future collaborations or remains a bold experiment, it’s obvious that football fashion is no longer strictly top-down. It’s becoming a collective expression, and the 2026 kit will be the first tangible sign of this new creative frontier.
Image Source: unsplash.com
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