Another season of MLS is on tap, which means all 30 teams will have a new kit from Adidas. The days of templates overrunning the league and stifling design are gone (at least for now), and each club has gotten a bespoke design that has delivered an array of looks across the two countries.
While some teams are really stretching the inspiration for these kits -- and who can blame them, having to come up with a new one each year and pretend they have some deep, local meaning when sometimes they just did something they thought looked cool -- others have found some truly delightful wells from which to draw from. And in the end, it's really just about whether it's a good look anyway.
So which kits are a hit, and which clubs missed? As each club unveils its new uni, we'll rank 'em!
1. New England Revolution
Hello, 1996, it's great to see you again! The team that has rightly clung to its name from MLS's inaugural season now has a kit that looks like it belongs in the outrageous and distinctive years of the league's founding, and that is wonderful.
The team claims that it's paying homage to the country's founding in 1776 and this being the 250th anniversary of the United States, but this is the New England Revolution. They are the MS Paint crest. They are the militia shooting muskets after goals. They are the team who most exemplifies the year MLS was born and American soccer changed forever. And this kit, with its red, white and blue starburst design, is that.
2. LAFC
LAFC has gone back and forth between trying to make black and gold stand alone, which is mostly underwhelming, and leaning into the art deco vibe of their brand, which is gorgeous. They went with the latter this time around, and it's one of the best kits they've ever had.
This is how you go bold, while grounding your design in the elements that have been part of your identity from the jump and stand out from anyone else in the league. This is beautiful, rooted in Los Angeles and screams LAFC. It's perfect.
3. FC Cincinnati
Cincy usually keep it simple with their change kit, opting for a basic white or orange. This year, they have decided to combine the white and orange into a creative and outstanding design that might be the club's best kit yet.
The twist on vertical stripes works because the two tones of orange soften the whole kit, keeping it interesting and bold without overwhelming you. It's just a smart bit of design and one FCC hopefully pulls on with regularity, even if it is their second shirt.
4. FC Dallas
The hoops are back in Dallas! Or Frisco, whatever. And these are real, two-colored hoops, not the bizarre red-on-red they played around with for a couple of years. This is a beautiful set of hoops, well spaced and framing the logos and sponsor perfectly. The collar complements it well, as do the shoulder stripes.
FCD should've made hoops their signature, and even if this isn't red and white like the old days, it's still fabulous. Now they just need to stick with it.
5. San Jose Earthquakes
The Grateful Dead might be primarily associated with San Francisco, but they were formed just up the road from San Jose in Palo Alto, and this is a terrific kit that pays homage to that iconic Bay Area band. The tie-dye design is unusual on a soccer shirt, but it doesn't look ridiculous or perverse, and the Quakes' blue and black, on a white jersey, makes sure that it still feels like it represents the club. It's wonderful, and maybe next year San Jose will try a Scarlet Begonias kit to round out the set.
6. CF Montréal
Montréal says this kit is inspired by the threads worn by the 2015 squad, which is a team worth remembering. After all, that Impact side made the Concacaf Champions League final and bested Toronto in the MLS Cup playoffs.
This kit looks nothing like the jersey that team wore, but it still looks good, and the club partnered with ProCure in the fight against prostate cancer with this kit. Good design, good team, good inspiration, however tenuous the latter might be. That's a good kit.
7. New York City FC
NYCFC have struggled to find the right secondary shirt. Their home kit looks like every other City Football Group club, which puts pressure on them to make their other look distinctive and uniquely theirs. That has led them to garish and bold and forgettable black, but this one really nails it for the first time.
It's an understated shirt -- the navy is hardly groundbreaking, but the design is gorgeous and won't be confused for another club anywhere in the world, while the silver stripes and sponsor fit in excellently. Throw in the minimalist crest and the Pigeons are going to look fly.
8. Minnesota United
The Loons are celebrating 10 years in MLS with a bit of a nod to their inaugural threads. Whereas that first MNUFC jersey had a blue sash, this one has blue design marks that are absent across the front of the shirt, creating a subtle sash using negative space.
It's a good design, and it's nice to see them return to the black-and-blue sky motif that was such a hit in their previous northern lights kit. If they keep coming back to this, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone complain.
9. LA Galaxy
It's always tough for teams who wear white at home to find interesting looks, but the Galaxy's sash gives them something unique and identifiable. Whenever they lean into the sash, they're doing a good job, even if the break for the sponsor is a bummer, but the six stars help balance that out.
10. Orlando City
Orlando has never really tested new colors in its kits. The Lions wear purple on their primary shirt, and their secondary kits have been either white or a pale purple, so going with this yellowish gold is a huge pivot for the club and a terrific move. It's bright and bold without straying too far from their identity as the purple accents make sure you know this is Orlando City. It also just feels warm and, well, Florida.
11. Real Salt Lake
This is a nice kit that makes full use of the club's excellent color palette on a sharp hooped design and, in a vacuum, it's hard to find any demerits here.
RSL are going to look good whenever they pull this shirt on, so why are they lower than FC Dallas, who have a similar hooped kit? Because the real star of Salt Lake's colors is the claret, which is the most sumptuous shade of red in a league full of red, and this kit minimizes it a tad, but it's still a superb look that should be flying off the shelves in Utah.
12. Toronto FC
This kit was so nearly a banger. The red pops so nicely on the white and the center stripe, made up of six smaller stripes representing each of Toronto's boroughs, is both a nice touch and also excellent looking to make sure this isn't another one of those boring "clean" white looks. Throw in the two-tone crest and a black sponsor so everything works together cohesively and TFC hit on almost every design mark.
The BMO circular logo, just beneath the crest, though, makes that quadrant of the kit look a bit bloated. It's a small ding, but that's the difference between a good kit, which this is, and the very best. So close.
13. San Diego FC
San Diego got saddled with the expansion season plain kit last year, so it's nice to see the club get a design -- heck, any design -- on this one. Because its crest is so lackluster, there was little indication where it would go with its fits, and the club decided to stick with white. It's hardly exciting, and it's still not clear what SDFC's visual identity is, but the extensive blue and orange make the shirt pop and at least feels like something bespoke instead of off-the-rack like in 2025.
14. Austin FC
Austin is matching vertical stripes on its primary and secondary kits for the first time, and with both shirts being green, it could be a little redundant, but this jersey is different enough that they're going to make for a nice pairing.
The pale green and white go together nicely, and the black stripes, logos and sponsor make sure the kit isn't too subtle and forgettable. Overall, it works, and it complements the home shirt without feeling like simply a color-swap version of it.
15. Chicago Fire
Chicago's disastrous and abandoned rebrand is still seared into our minds, so any time the club returns to its roots, it's a big win. Red with a white band across the middle gets the job done. Add in a collar, which has a nice red stripe on it, and a blue sponsor across the front ... and it's taking care of the details, too.
The Fire have a bright future, with their own stadium set to break ground later this year, but it needs to be grounded in the club's history. This kit does that.
16. D.C. United
It's black with red and white. Good job! That's generally all you need when you're DCU, and they did it here. It's really a less-is-more situation, unless they're going to bring back the three stripes across the front, but we'll have to keep dreaming on that one.
17. Vancouver Whitecaps
Some clubs need to take chances with their kits, but not the Whitecaps. Their colors and crest are some of the best in the league and lets them actually pull off simplicity in a way that few other teams can get away with. This is another example, as they dip back into navy blue and go to the trim for a bit of inventiveness, which absolutely works. Ho hum, another good kit in Vancouver.
18. Sporting Kansas City
SKC's crest lacks any real identifying mark and hasn't aged well. What they did have, for a time, was argyle. They used it brilliantly on several kits and integrated it across the stadium and training ground. Maybe new ownership will make the necessary change and redo the crest with the diamond pattern, but in the meantime, we've got this kit. It's not the best use we've seen, with the gap in the middle of the design looking awkward even if it frames the sponsor decently, but we'll take any argyle we can get from Sporting.
19. New York Red Bulls
This isn't the Red Bulls' best design, and the premise behind the roots meant to symbolize the club's growth is pretty stretched, which means that in a vacuum, this kit would be a lot lower. However, we're giving credit whenever the club goes with MetroStars' black and red over the Red Bull conglomerate's white, red and blue. This kit feels like it represents the club, not the energy drink brand, and so it's easy to overlook some other things.
20. Charlotte FC
Can you believe it's already Charlotte's fifth MLS season? The club is going back to basics with this one, using blue on the body and white sleeves, as it did in its first two years, and it's a smart move. The Crown have a distinct color, and the white sleeves really help it pop. They could probably try for a hint of black in the trim somewhere, just to bring their whole color palette into the design, but this is a club that is better suited to a home kit that lets their color shine and this, like their inaugural fit, does just that.
21. Atlanta United FC
Thirty years since Atlanta hosted the Olympics, and as the city gets set to welcome the globe back to the American South for the World Cup, the Five Stripes have gone with a kit that harkens back to those 1996 Games. The green in the sash covered the city for those games, and the cream made for a nice accent color back then. The club did a good job syncing the crest and sponsor to fit that aesthetic, but the shirt still falls a bit flat.
It's too bad the red-and-black primary shirt precluded them from a green-dominant kit, which would have better channeled the source of inspiration, but it could use the little pops of red, pink and blue of those Olympics regardless.
22. Inter Miami CF
There's nothing wrong with this Miami kit. It's black, which is a team color, and has pink accents, so Miami is right in its color wheel. There's not much else going on, and there doesn't have to be. It's a perfectly serviceable kit, even if it's unremarkable, and now that they've corrected their original sin of not wearing pink at home, there's not much to complain about.
Plus, why bother using up creative, interesting designs when you know you're going to sell oodles of them regardless of how it looks so long as it says "Messi" on the back. Save the good kits for after he retires.
23. Columbus Crew
Remember when the Crew tried to make black their primary color and put yellow on the back burner? Thank god those days are over. This kit is simple, but simply yellow is more than enough for Columbus, and the collar is a nice throwback to the early 2000s when it was a staple on the Crew shirts.
24. Colorado Rapids
Wow, a team whose colors don't include black having a black jersey? Amazing, novel, breathtaking. Black uniforms are overused across all sports, and this one is no different, especially considering it's devoid of really any design elements.
Making matters worse is Colorado saying that this kit celebrates 30 years of club history, so going to a color you've never had any association with makes no sense. The Rapids should have tapped into the green, blue and gold of their early years if they wanted this kit to be a 30th-year celebration.
25. Philadelphia Union
Any time the Union don't have a vertical stripe, preferably down the center, they've failed. This isn't a bad design, and the navy and gold is sharp, but it's uninspired. If they're going to keep trying to pull on Ben Franklin and the constitutional convention, then they're going to have to create better, clearer and consistent marks that they can own instead of just putting "We The People" at random when they don't have an idea of their own.
More than anything, though, it doesn't have a vertical stripe.
26. Seattle Sounders
The Sounders had arguably the best kit set of any team in MLS history last year, so they were just about guaranteed to suffer a drop in 2026, but this is still a big disappointment. They went for clean and simple, but that approach just doesn't really work with rave green. Your colors demand more than this.
27. Nashville SC
Nashville has made it clear in its short existence that it doesn't want to get particularly creative with its home kits. The club's aesthetic is going to be yellow, and that's fine.
That said, NSC don't have to stack the Adidas logo and crest in the center right above the sponsor logo, too. That's adding clunky design to a kit that was never going to wow anyone anyway. The best thing about this jersey is that Nashville Predator and Nashville SC part-owner Filip Forsberg leaked it when he wore it to a game last week.
28. Portland Timbers
The idea for this kit is great. It's meant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Providence Park, a stadium that defines this club arguably more than any home ground does its MLS team, but it just doesn't come off well.
Instead of looking like the worn exterior of the hallowed old venue with ivy crawling across it, it looks like a nondistinct pale yellow and, without explanation, it would be hard to figure out what it's meant to evoke. It's a shame the execution didn't match the idea.
29. St. Louis City SC
City have been wandering in the desert, searching for the spring of decent kits, and their journey will continue for at least another year as they trot out another dud in 2026. It's nice that they moved on from their white change kit, but gold almost never works, and this is no exception. They call this a tribute to Tina Turner, which is a shame because the Queen of Rock deserves much better than this.
30. Houston Dynamo
Credit to the Dynamo for going for it. The problem is that it's ugly, and a "mission control jersey" should be cool and space-like, not just another satellite view of the metro area's major roadways like so many other teams across all sports around the world.