RANKED: The 2025/26 Czech First League Home Kits

The 2025/26 season is officially upon us, and for this week's blog, I'm heading down a different path from the norm. Last season, I made a Czech kit ranking into a Twitter thread, but this season, I'm turning it into a blog - mainly because there's currently too much month at the end of my money to attend the games I'd initially planned to attend and subsequently write about. Add to that the fact that the game I'd planned on attending and writing about has been called off because of the weather.

I must now own at least twenty football shirts, and I'll gladly admit collecting them is a bit of an addiction. Despite calling myself a Zbrojovka fan, the only Czech shirts I own are a Sigma Olomouc home shirt from 2021-22, and a Czech national team shirt. Zbrojovka's shirt for this season may be the next one for my collection - perhaps in future I'll do a blog on some of my personal favourites in that collection.

But for now, here's a ranking of all sixteen of the Czech First League kits from best to worst, with all pics taken from Football Kit Archive:

Disclaimer - if any kit hasn't been updated for the 2025-26 season, I'll assume the club in question will be using last season's kits.


16. Slovacko

From what I can tell, Slovacko haven't updated from last season's kit, and honestly, it's the most boring and uninspired kit I've seen. What a way to balance out the white - a slightly darker shade of white. Woohoo!


15. Zlin


Now this one was always going to stir up some kind of controversy - do I go high or low with such an extravagant and eccentric design? Sadly, it's going to have to be the latter. I hope I don't need to explain why. It's just chaos, and not in a good way, which is a shame, as it could have worked if it had just dialled it back ever so slightly. I'm sure Zlin will be hoping to avoid the kind of chaotic season that this shirt would be befitting of.


14. Bohemians

From what I can see, everyone's favourite left-wing Czech institution (citation needed) haven't updated their shirt for the coming season. It's a huge shame, because honestly this doesn't really work compared to previous Bohs kits I've seen. The waistline is a particular bugbear, and the thinness of the stripes just throws me off. It might be time to go back to the hoops. In Bohemians' defence, their away kits are always great, but that'll have to wait for another blog.


13. Sigma Olomouc

I mentioned last season's cup winners as one of the only shirts from Czech Republic that I own - namely the 2022 shirt, which I think is a beauty. They've followed up last season's flashy design with something similar, which unfortunately pales in comparison. Last season's is marginally worse I would say, but even so, this one is a bit of an eyesore. Not a Zlin level eyesore, but an eyesore nonetheless.


12. Pardubice

Much like the team itself, it seems wrong to put them anywhere other than the bottom half. It's the same shirt as last season as far as I can tell, and I placed it quite high on my previous list. I can only assume I hadn't seen the full shirt, as the sponsors are all over the place. For a shirt with so much going on, it somehow also doesn't have a lot going on. That probably only made sense in my head, but I hope at least someone gets what I mean.


11. Dukla Praha

I must confess having been extremely harsh on this one before when ranking the kits last season and putting it bottom. Given that it seems the kit isn't likely to change, this is the same one I ranked so low last season, and on looking at it again, it's not that bad. It's at least symmetrical and not too complicated. I'm still not really a fan of the layout. So yeah, it's still not great, but it's not as awful as I made out a year ago...


10. Slovan Liberec

It saddens me a little to put Slovan Liberec this low down, considering they topped my list last season. That said, this is an ambitious design but the execution just doesn't really come off. They peaked with last season's, as this one just comes off as a slightly more exciting Slovacko kit.


9. Sparta Praha


It's certainly not the worst kit in the world, but it's not exactly a standout, especially as far as Sparta are concerned. They have a little more freedom in contrast to their city rivals Slavia, so they surely could have gone beyond the simple approach here. Sometimes simplicity can be great. but here...it's not really doing a lot.


8. Mlada Boleslav

Perhaps the tyre track style is a nod to the town's automotive history given that the Skoda factory is the dominant part of the town, but honestly it doesn't really come off all that well. That said, it's an admirable idea that moves away from the usual simplicity of Mlada Boleslav kits. Maybe it looks better from a distance - who knows?


7. Slavia Praha


I don't hate this by any means, but I'm pretty indifferent towards it. For a club tied to the half-and-half design indefinitely, it's hard to vary it significantly, and it shows. You could tell me this design was actually from ten years ago or last season and I probably wouldn't bat an eyelid.


6. Hradec Kralove


The first thing I'll say is there's a lot going on here - the patterns and the sponsors. In all honesty, it doesn't really do a lot for me, though it's slightly better than last season's. It's not as much of a mess, and the designers have clearly dialled it back a little. Also in its defence, the gold trim on the collar works really well.


5. Banik Ostrava


Instead of ranking these once and for all, I'm going through these in alphabetical order, so I've genuinely no idea whether this will place high or low. I imagine it will be somewhere in the middle, as it oozes a certain simplicity, and I mean this in the nicest possible way. You could argue it's a bit bland, but sometimes less is more.


4. Jablonec

I must admit, this one is an absolute beauty. As I said in my thread last season, it's the kind of thing Bohemians should be doing. If I were to be critical, the sponsors are a little jarring, but this is the modern football landscape. All that's left to say is; Jablonec, you've done it again. Just don't bottle getting into Europe this time...


3. Karvina

At first glance, this one is a bit of an eyesore, but then you realise there's a story within the shirt and it becomes a thing of beauty. Very few clubs have opted to bring their city identity into the kit design this season, so this is hugely to Karvina's credit. I believe Unie Hlubina (from the same mining-heavy region as Karvina) in the third tier did similar with their kit last season. It may seem a minor detail (no pun intended), but it's an absolute touch of class that should be commended.


2. Teplice

I have a lot of time for this particular shirt. As with Karvina's shirt, the subtle patterns representative of the town and regions history are a brilliant touch. Perhaps it's so Teplice can distinguish themselves from Mansfield Town, but in any case, it works magnificently. A lot of the shirts here could also learn how to do symmetry from this one.


1. Viktoria Plzen

Last season, it pained me to put a shirt of blue and red so low down in the ranking, but the execution while ambitious just did not come off. Generally speaking, red and blue makes for the best colour combination, particularly in these shades. Though the arms are a little off here, the overall execution more than makes up for that to create a stunning kit.

And it can also compensate for the fact that somehow Championship legend, and current Plzen goal-machine Matej Vydra somehow never put on a Crystal Palace shirt.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Unofficial European Cup 1960-61 Preliminary Round Second Leg...

Solitude is Bliss: A testimonial at Ireland's oldest club

The Artis Formerly Known as Lišeň: An Identity Crisis in South Moravia