The jersey as a canvas

Today, football jerseys seem to have taken on a life of their own. From Madrid Metro's World Cup Football Jersey collection to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's custom-made Arsenal kurta, we are constantly seeing kits on our timelines. The jersey has become one of the more honest ways people communicate who they are, whether that means a political belief, support for an underdog, or a connection to a place they carry with them in the diaspora. As Kélicia Massala stated, jerseys have become a sort of "Cultural IP," or rather, a medium through which cultural stories, symbols, and traditions are preserved and celebrated.

My personal jersey collection is definitely a testament to this. It consists of an old Rayo Vallecano kit, Spain's Republican Flag jersey, Full Kit's Palestine collab jersey with Sarah Elawad for the New York City Keffiyeh Cup, and Nico Williams's Athletic Bilbao kit, so yes, I think it is fair to say that I myself am doing everything I can to signal my values whenever I attend a football event. All that to say, the jersey is one of the most public and visible ways an individual or a community can say something about itself. 

Given the rise of blockcore and football fashion, we are finally seeing the collision between design and football culture. Instead of art and sport existing as separate worlds, the two collide, and in really exciting ways. And few organizations have done more to amplify that work than Design FC, a nonprofit that raises a natural question: Who gets to be part of the design process? And what if communities themselves played a bigger role in that conversation?

Designing from the bottom up

Design FC is a youth design non-profit that works at the intersection of football and creative education. Through programs that have reached young people across 20 cities in the US and UK, and collaborations with organizations like EA Sports FC, New Balance, adidas, and Visa, design FC has built a model around a simple but compelling idea: give kids the tools to design their own football jerseys, then bring those jerseys to life.

I had a chance to chat with Oliver Steinglass, Chief Operating Officer of Design FC, who described the jersey as a starting point, a question about identity posed directly to the community rather than answered on its behalf. The jersey design process raises a series of questions for the kids: What connects us? What makes this place distinct? What do we want to carry on our backs when we play? For young people who have often been told that art and sport belong in separate categories, the design process opens something up. It asks them to think carefully about identity, their neighborhood, their history, and what they are proud of. The jersey becomes a canvas for those reflections, turning ideas and stories into something tangible.

That physical endpoint is part of what makes the program meaningful. The creative work is not left in one room while sport happens in another. The jersey is produced, worn on the pitch, and celebrated by the community. The process carries an idea from concept to product, and along the way, social and emotional development takes place. Kids have conversations about their communities, build artistic confidence, and realize that sport and creativity were never really separate to begin with.

37 countries, 37 designers, 37 stories

This summer, Design FC has taken that model global. To mark the 2026 World Cup, they launched the Youth Creative Collective, a global design initiative in which one young person from each of 37 participating countries has designed a jersey representing their nation. Working with 37 partner organizations worldwide. Design FC identified a Youth Leader in each country, gave them a canvas, and asked them the same question.

The results speak for themselves. Natsuki, 18, from Tokyo, designed her Japan jersey around traditional patterns representing good fortune, alongside koi, Mount Fuji, and wave motifs connecting the front and back of the shirt. The detail that anchors the whole design is easy to miss at first: a caterpillar in one corner, a butterfly in another. "At this moment, there are many things in my life that do not go well," she wrote. "But I believe that one day I, too, will become a butterfly and be able to fly." She put it on the jersey as a message to anyone who might relate.

Geremi, 16, from San Pablo, Bolívar, Colombia, is part of the Línea Subterránea Foundation, a community organization that uses hip-hop culture as a tool for youth expression and violence prevention. His jersey incorporates indigenous Colombian symbols alongside the pink river dolphin, the jaguar, and the condor. The structural detail is remarkable: when the front and back of the jersey are placed together, they form the silhouette of Colombia's map. "I want to demonstrate that Colombia is much more than a country marked by violence," he wrote. "It is culture, creativity, identity, and expression."

Zeno Bridges is 12, loves to draw, and will tell you football is his preferred sport. A student at Mt Roskill Intermediate School in Auckland, one of New Zealand's most culturally diverse schools, he designed a jersey that holds an entire region within it. The Southern Cross sits above the outline of Puketāpapa, the mountain local to his community, referencing the stars that guided the first Māori navigators to Aotearoa. At the centre, the Niho Taniwha pattern uses 13 triangles to connect all 13 countries of Oceania Football. "This design shows who we are," Zeno and his team wrote. "Connected, diverse countries that strive hard and stand together."

Bringing the creative work back to the community

Taken together, these jerseys point to something larger than design. They show what happens when cultural expression is not filtered through institutions, brands, or distant creative teams, but shaped directly by the people who live inside those stories.

Each shirt carries a different geography, but the logic is the same: identity is not a fixed narrative imposed from the outside. It is something layered, personal, and constantly in motion. The jersey becomes a way to hold that complexity in public.

For Design FC, this is the underlying shift. The question is not just what a jersey looks like, but who gets to decide what it means. And in that shift, creative authority moves, however slightly, back toward the communities to which football has always belonged.

Follow the project on Instagram @designfc_ycc.