Chelsea Football Kit

Chelsea Football Shirts

Since the arrival of Roman Abramovich in 2003, Chelsea have emerged as one of the leading forces in world football, winning multiple Premier League titles and the Champions League in 2012. The club have been heavily criticised for their high levels of spending, but their supporters have enjoyed watching some of the greatest players of the Premier League era, including Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, John Terry and Eden Hazard.

Chelsea play at Stamford Bridge, however they have been looking for some time to move to a new stadium as they look for new solutions to maximise match day revenue, which currently falls behind a number of the league rivals. The clubs most famous manager is Jose Mourinho, who won them their first Premier League title, although his relationship with the fans changed when he took charge of rivals Manchester United in 2016.

Chelsea Home Shirt

The Chelsea home shirt is blue and is worn with blue shorts and white socks. Unlike the majority of teams, who often wore different kits in their formative years, this has always been the case for Chelsea. The exception was their very first kit, which was worn between 1905 and 1907.

Chelsea were formed after local rivals Fulham turned down the opportunity to play at Stamford Bridge as they could not afford the £1,500 annual rent. Rather than waste their asset – which was the second largest stadium in England at the time – the owners decided to form their own club and Chelsea FC was born. The initial kit was racing colours – a light green jersey – associated with the club’s president the Earl of Cadogan.

In 1960, Chelsea wore a crest on their jerseys for the first time in their history. The crest featured a lion rampant, which was inspired by the civic coat of arms of the London Borough of Chelsea.

1964 would be an important landmark in the history of the Chelsea kit as this was the first time they wore blue shorts, having previously worn white shorts. In 1967, they became the first English side to wear numbers on their shorts.

Chelsea Away Shirt

In recent years, Chelsea have rotated between three main colours for their away jersey – black, white and yellow. In our experience, the black jerseys are always the strongest sellers of the three.

With the introduction of third kits to satisfy the demands of European competition, Chelsea generally rotate between the colours. It has been consistent in recent seasons that the away shirt has been white and the third kit has been black, with this then being rotated the following season.

Chelsea Kit History

The first commercial Chelsea football shirt was manufactured by Umbro in 1975. Umbro were dominant during this period in English football history and supplied a high number of kits. Their partnership with Chelsea lasted until 1981, when Le Coq Sportif took over the contract.

Chelsea returned to Umbro in 1987 and this partnership would last until 2006 when, with the clubs profile higher than ever after Abramovich’s investment, they signed a deal with Adidas. The German sportswear giants would continue to partner The Blues through the most successful period of their history, but at the end of the 2015-2016 season, Chelsea announced that the following campaign would be their last and they had paid a £54 million termination fee to cancel their contract with Adidas six years early and pursue a more lucrative deal with another kit supplier.