Nike to bring back gold accent color for 2023-24 Chelsea home kit

According to the ever-reliable kit sleuths at Footy Headlines, next year’s Chelsea home kit will feature a primary accent color of “gold” rather than the more usual white or yellow (though white is listed as a third color).

While the shirt’s design remains a mystery at this very early stage, the use of gold accenting will hopefully result in an iconic shirt, just as the previous two times (by my reckoning) that it’s been used.

(And our contract with Three UK is also up at the end of the season, so hopefully whoever sponsors us next will have a less ghastly logo.)

The one that comes to mind immediately is the 2012-13 home shirt by adidas, in part because it was used more often than any other (modern era) home shirt thanks to the longest season in club history (69 games!) and in part because it was released as a commemorative shirt for our first(!) Champions League title — yes, with the star over the badge. Sadly, the star was not used for the actual match-playing shirts. (And the back of the commemorative shirt says “Champions of Europe” with the No.12, which is ... okay, I guess, in this case.)

Dávid Pásztor

But this is not the only iconic Chelsea shirt with a gold accent.

For the club’s centenary year of 2005-06, Umbro also used a gold accent on the home shirts, though in this case the sponsor’s name remained in white and the badge remained full color (with “100 years” and “Centenary 1995-2005” written around it).

In both 2005 and 2012, the goalkeeping kit (black and green, respectively) also used gold accents.

Photo by Jamie McDonald/Getty Images