Champions League Kit Schedule 2026/27: What Every Club Is Wearing Tonight, Every Matchday Confirmed

Wondering what kit, jersey or uniform your club is wearing in the Champions League tonight? Here is the part most fans never hear: UEFA settles it at a meeting the day before the match, and the visiting club is the one that changes. Kits in Europe are not a matchday surprise either. They are agreed the night before, in a room with both clubs, the referee and the UEFA delegate.

This page is that schedule. Every league-phase fixture, every matchday, which jersey each club wears, who has to change and why the away side sometimes reaches for a third kit. We confirm each match against matchday photography and highlights, never against preview graphics, and we update it as each night is played. For the Premier League version of this page, see our Premier League kit schedule.

Matchday 1: Every Kit Matchup

Eighteen fixtures across three nights, Tuesday September 8 to Thursday September 10, and the season opened with the two biggest shirts in the competition on the same pitch. Real Madrid wore the white home shirt with the dark green trim and the pink shoulder stripes, and Inter wore the black and blue home stripes at the Bernabeu, a 2-1 Madrid win and the cleanest picture of the night: white against black and blue needs no discussion. Borussia Dortmund wore the yellow home shirt and Villarreal, whose own home shirt is yellow, changed into the light grey away shirt with the royal blue sleeves at Signal Iduna Park, which is the whole reason change kits exist, yellow against yellow was never going to be allowed. Porto wore the blue and white home stripes and Manchester City changed into the black away shirt with the gold bee pattern at the Dragao, a 2-0 City win. City could not wear sky blue against Porto's blue stripes, and the black away shirt with the gold trim is one of the better travelling kits in Europe this season. Club Brugge wore the blue and black home stripes and Aston Villa went all the way to the icy blue third shirt in Bruges, because Villa's claret home shirt and black away shirt both fall too close to Brugge's stripes. Villa won it 3-2. The two early kickoffs, AEK Athens against LASK and Lille against Real Betis, are confirmed below as soon as we have matchday photography for each.

Wednesday was the better night for kits, and the pick of it was in Naples. Napoli wore the sky blue home shirt with the gold centenary crest against an Arsenal side in the red home shirt with white sleeves, and Arsenal wore red shorts rather than their usual white, a version of the kit they have barely used in years and the single best decision of the matchday. Arsenal won it 1-0. Liverpool wore the red home shirt with the Candy graphic and Atletico Madrid changed into the black away shirt with the lime green trim at Anfield, a 2-1 Liverpool win in which the lime was the only thing keeping the away side off the background. Sporting wore the green and white home hoops against Galatasaray in red and yellow, 3-1 to the hosts. Paris Saint-Germain wore the blue home shirt with the red Hechter stripe against a Slovan Bratislava side in grey and won 6-1. Barcelona wore the blaugrana home stripes in a 5-1 win over Feyenoord, whose change kit we could not confirm from the night's photography, and Stuttgart beat Viking 3-1 in a fixture nobody photographed closely enough to log.

The nights are listed newest first, so Thursday's fixtures sit at the top and Tuesday's opener sits at the bottom. Cards marked "expected" follow the UEFA rule, the home club in its home shirt and the visitor changing only where the colors fall too close; cards marked "to be confirmed" wait for the night's photography. Only Thursday's six are still expected.

Confirmed kits are checked against matchday photography and highlights, not preview graphics. Expected kits follow the UEFA rule and flip to confirmed on the night. Each club's full 2026/27 wardrobe, graded, is linked below.

Matchday 1: The Kit Matchups, Up Close

The shirts below are the actual 2026/27 products, cut out from retailer and club-store photography so you can see what was on the pitch rather than a preview graphic. Grades for each pairing follow the way they do on the Premier League page.

Napoli vs Arsenal

Matchday 1 · Kit Matchup

NAPOLI · SKY BLUE HOME

VS

ARSENAL · RED HOME

Full Time · Arsenal 1, Napoli 0 · Graded A-

Shirt product photos sourced from retailer listings.

Grade: A-. The Arsenal half of this is the story, and it is genuinely special. They wore red shorts instead of the usual white, a version of the kit they have barely put on the pitch in years. Arsenal in white shorts is the default and it is perfectly fine, but it breaks the shirt off at the waist and leaves a visitor reading as two separate halves on a wide camera angle. In red over red they become one solid block of colour, and the white sleeves stop competing with a white waist and turn into the only light on that side of the pitch. We would take the all-red every single week.

What holds it just short of the top mark is that the interest was one-sided. Napoli wore their standard home shirt. It is a very good standard home shirt, sky blue with a gold centenary crest and a polo collar, and gold on azure is a combination almost nobody else in Europe can use, but it is what they wear most weeks. Sky blue against red is a strong opposition on its own, so this was always going to look good before either club made a decision. The best matchups have both sides doing something you do not usually see. Here only one of them did, and Arsenal are the entire reason this rates as highly as it does.

Liverpool vs Atletico Madrid

Matchday 1 · Kit Matchup

LIVERPOOL · RED HOME

VS

ATLETICO MADRID · BLACK AWAY

Full Time · Liverpool 2, Atletico Madrid 1

Shirt product photos sourced from retailer listings.

Red against black is a pairing that usually needs help, because both colours go dark under floodlights and a broadcast camera flattens them into the same mass. Two things rescued this one. Liverpool's home shirt is not plain red any more, it carries the scattered pink and white Candy graphic that reads as texture from distance and keeps the shirt from going matte. And Atletico's away shirt runs lime green through the sleeves, the crest and the sponsor, which is the single loudest colour on the pitch and does all the separating by itself. Take the lime out and this is a hard watch. With it, the away side is the one you follow.

Real Madrid vs Inter

Matchday 1 · Kit Matchup

REAL MADRID · WHITE HOME

VS

INTER · BLACK AND BLUE HOME

Full Time · Real Madrid 2, Inter 1

Real Madrid shirt photo via Ultra Football, Inter via Soccer Wearhouse.

White against black and blue is the pairing the Champions League anthem was written for, and neither club had to think about it. Madrid's home shirt is the plainest it has been in years, white with the collar and cuffs picked out in dark green, and the one loud decision on it, the pink three stripes across the shoulders, is exactly what a striped navy opponent shows off. Inter's shirt does the rest of the work: the stripes are back to a broad, old-fashioned width, the collar is back for the first time in a while, and every mark on it, from the crest to the sponsor, is rendered in gold. Two shirts with real history on them, in their own colors, with nothing changed and nothing needing to change. We would put this among the best-looking matchups the league phase will produce.

Borussia Dortmund vs Villarreal

Matchday 1 · Kit Matchup

DORTMUND · YELLOW HOME

VS

VILLARREAL · GREY AWAY

Full Time · Borussia Dortmund 3, Villarreal 2

Dortmund shirt photo via Ultra Football, Villarreal via the official Villarreal CF store.

Yellow against yellow is the one clash in football nobody argues about, so Villarreal were always going to change, and the interesting part is what they changed into. The 2026/27 away shirt is a pearl grey body with royal blue raglan sleeves and a thin line of yellow piping, a deliberate callback to the grey change kits Villarreal wore in 2003 and 2004, and against Dortmund's yellow it reads almost white from distance, which is why plenty of viewers logged it as a white shirt. Grey and blue against the loudest yellow in the sport is a genuinely good picture: the blue sleeves give the away side one strong color of their own, and the grey keeps the whole frame from turning into a yellow wall. Dortmund's home shirt does what it always does. The tonal graphic pulled from the Minister Stein colliery framework is a texture rather than a pattern at broadcast distance, and the black trim at the collar is the only thing breaking the yellow. Five goals, and a change kit that earned its place.

Porto vs Man City

Matchday 1 · Kit Matchup

PORTO · BLUE AND WHITE HOME

VS

MAN CITY · BLACK AWAY

Full Time · Porto 0, Man City 2

Porto shirt photo via Ultra Football, Manchester City via Soccer Wearhouse.

This is the first time the black away shirt has had a European night, and it looked built for one. City could not wear sky blue against Porto's blue and white stripes, so the choice was the black bee shirt or the white third, and black was the right call: Porto's stripes are bright and busy, and a dark, single-color opponent lets them carry the picture. The gold bee pattern is almost invisible from the stands and reads as texture on television, which is what a good travelling shirt should do. Porto's New Balance home shirt is one of the cleaner striped kits in the competition, with the stripes running edge to edge and a plain white collar, and it needed a dark partner to look its best. It got one.

Club Brugge vs Aston Villa

Matchday 1 · Kit Matchup

CLUB BRUGGE · BLUE AND BLACK HOME

VS

ASTON VILLA · ICY BLUE THIRD

Full Time · Club Brugge 2, Aston Villa 3

Club Brugge shirt photo via the official Club Brugge shop, Aston Villa via the official Aston Villa store.

The most interesting kit decision of the opening night, and the third shirt earned its place. Brugge's home shirt is blue and black stripes with solid black sleeves, which rules out Villa's claret home shirt on color and their black away shirt on the sleeves alone. That left the icy blue third, the Villa Park mosaic shirt, which most fans expected to see once or twice a season at most and which has now been worn twice in two weeks after its debut at Hull. Against Brugge it worked better than it did in the Premier League: the pale blue sits far enough from Brugge's royal blue that the two never read as the same family, and the claret trim on the collar and cuffs is the only warm color on the pitch. A third shirt that solves a real clash and looks good doing it is the best argument for third shirts there is.

The Clubs We Grade, And What They Are Wearing In Europe

Twelve of the clubs in this season's league phase have a full kit page on ColorWay Sports, with the home, away and third shirts described and graded. Those pages are where the shirt detail lives; this page is where the matchups live.

How Champions League Kit Clashes Actually Get Decided

The Champions League runs on UEFA's equipment rules, not the domestic ones, and the process is different from the Premier League's in three ways that matter for this page.

Clubs register their kits with UEFA before the season. Every club in the competition submits its first, second and third choice kits, including the goalkeeper sets, and those are the only shirts it can wear in Europe. A club cannot pull out a one-off shirt for a European night the way it might for a domestic cup game.

The home club wears its first-choice kit. The visiting club has to wear a kit that contrasts clearly with it, and where the colors could be confused, the visiting club is the one that changes. If the second kit also falls too close, the third kit is the answer, which is why Aston Villa turned up in Bruges in the icy blue third rather than the black away shirt.

It is settled at the organisational meeting the day before. UEFA holds a meeting on the eve of every match with both clubs, the referee and the UEFA match delegate, and the kit colors for both teams, keepers included, are confirmed there. By the time the teams walk out, the decision is a day old.

The sleeves are the tell. Every club wears the competition's starball badge on one sleeve and the Respect badge on the other, and the league phase gives every club four home games and four away games, so every registered kit gets its airing across the eight matchdays.

The 2026/27 League Phase Calendar

Thirty-six clubs, eight games each, one table. The dates below are the matchdays we track on this page; each section above is updated as the night is played.

• Matchday 1: Tuesday September 8 to Thursday September 10
• Matchday 2: Tuesday October 13 and Wednesday October 14
• Matchday 3: Tuesday October 20 and Wednesday October 21
• Matchday 4: Tuesday November 3 and Wednesday November 4
• Matchday 5: Tuesday November 24 and Wednesday November 25
• Matchdays 6 to 8: December and January, dates added as UEFA confirms them

Frequently Asked Questions

What kit is my club wearing in the Champions League tonight?

Check the matchday grid above. The home club wears its first-choice kit, and the visiting club changes only where UEFA decides the colors fall too close. Kits are agreed at the organisational meeting the day before the match, so the answer exists a day before kickoff, and we flip each card from expected to confirmed on the night.

What jersey is Real Madrid wearing in the Champions League?

The white home shirt, almost every time. Madrid opened the 2026/27 league phase in white against Inter's black and blue stripes on September 8, and white is the default in Europe because so few opponents wear it. They change to the dark green away or the pink third only when the home club is in white or a very pale color.

What jersey is Barcelona wearing in the Champions League?

The blaugrana home shirt at Camp Nou, where Barcelona open Matchday 1 against Feyenoord on September 9. Away from home, Barcelona change only against a red or blue opponent that clashes with the stripes, and the light green third from the 1996/97 Kappa era is the shirt most likely to appear on those nights.

What jersey is Liverpool wearing in the Champions League?

The red home shirt with the 1989 Candy graphic at Anfield, starting with Atletico Madrid on September 9. Atletico's red and white stripes are the clash in that fixture, so it is the visitors who change, most likely into the black away shirt.

What jersey is Manchester City wearing in the Champions League?

Depends on the opponent more than for any other big club, because so many European sides wear blue. City wore the black away shirt with the gold bee pattern at Porto on September 8 and will wear it at most blue-shirted opponents; the sky blue home shirt is for the Etihad and for opponents in red, white or yellow.

What jersey is Arsenal wearing in the Champions League?

The red home shirt with the white sleeves at Napoli on September 9, because red against sky blue is no clash. Arsenal's navy away and yellow third come out only against red opponents, the way they did at Aston Villa in the Premier League.

What jersey is Manchester United wearing in the Champions League?

The red home shirt with the 1977 collar at Old Trafford against Sabah on September 10. United change only against a red home side, so expect red for most of the league phase.

What jersey is Bayern Munich wearing in the Champions League?

The red home shirt at the Allianz Arena against Bodo/Glimt on September 10. Bayern go to the white away or the navy and purple third only when the home club is in red.

What jersey is PSG wearing in the Champions League?

The blue home shirt with the red Hechter stripe at the Parc des Princes against Slovan Bratislava on September 9. PSG change to the white away shirt against blue home sides.

What jersey did Inter wear at Real Madrid?

The black and blue home stripes, with the polo collar and gold detailing, in the 2-1 defeat at the Bernabeu on September 8. White against black and blue is no clash, so neither club changed.

What jersey did Aston Villa wear at Club Brugge?

The icy blue third shirt, the Villa Park mosaic kit, in the 3-2 win on September 8. Brugge's blue and black stripes ruled out both Villa's claret home shirt and their black away shirt at once, which is exactly the situation a third kit exists for.

What jersey did Villarreal wear at Dortmund?

The pearl grey away shirt with the royal blue sleeves, in the 3-2 defeat on September 8. Villarreal's home shirt is yellow, the same as Dortmund's, so the visitors had to change. The grey reads almost white on television, which is why many viewers logged it as a white kit.

Who decides which kit a team wears in the Champions League?

UEFA, through its match delegate, at a meeting with both clubs and the referee on the eve of the game. The home club has priority and wears its first-choice kit. The visiting club wears a contrasting kit, and if there is a clash it is the visitor that changes.

Why do teams wear different kits in the Champions League than in their league?

Two reasons. Clubs register a first, second and third kit with UEFA before the season and can only use those, and the opponents are different, so a club that never needs its third shirt at home can meet a European side whose colors force it out. The competition's starball badge on the sleeve is the other visible difference from a domestic shirt.

Can a club wear its home kit away from home in the Champions League?

Yes, whenever there is no clash. Real Madrid's white travels almost everywhere, and Arsenal's red home shirt is the expected kit at Napoli because red against sky blue needs no change.

Why did Manchester City wear black at Porto?

Porto's home shirt is blue and white stripes, so City's sky blue home shirt was too close. The black away shirt with the gold bee pattern was the clear contrast, and it is the shirt City will wear at most blue-shirted opponents in Europe this season.

How many games does each club play in the league phase?

Eight, four at home and four away, against eight different opponents, between September and January. The top eight in the single table go straight to the round of 16 and places nine to twenty-four go into a knockout play-off.

When is the next Champions League matchday?

Matchday 2 is Tuesday October 13 and Wednesday October 14, 2026. Matchday 3 follows the week after, October 20 and 21, then Matchday 4 on November 3 and 4 and Matchday 5 on November 24 and 25. This page updates on each of those nights.

The Bottom Line

Champions League kits are decided the day before the match, by UEFA, with the home club in its first-choice shirt and the visitor changing only when the contrast fails. This page tracks every one of those decisions, matchday by matchday, starting with an opening night where Real Madrid's white met Inter's black and blue, Villarreal had to change at Dortmund, City went black at Porto and Villa reached all the way to the third shirt in Bruges. Check back each matchday: the grid updates the night the games are played.