Manchester City lets fans design its next official kit using AI

Manchester City is handing the design pens to its fanbase, but with a modern twist: they have to use generative AI.

The Premier League champions have teamed up with Puma to launch a fan contest for designing the club’s official third kit for the 2026-2027 season. The winning AI creation won’t just be a digital souvenir. The club confirmed it will be produced, sold globally to fans, and worn by the first team on the pitch, marking what City calls the first AI-generated uniform to ever be worn in professional football.

Prompts, credits, and virtual kits

The project runs on Puma AI Creator, a text-to-image generator powered by AI firm DeepObjects.

Fans sign up, type a prompt describing the look they want, and pick a visual aesthetic like "abstract," "emotive brushstrokes," or "dream visions."

The tool spits out four distinct design mockups mapped directly onto a 3D shirt. Creators can then tweak collar cuts, trim colors, and club badges.

Every user gets 15 credits, with each generation burning one credit. You can only submit up to two designs before the submission window closes on December 20th. The champion will be picked through a mix of public fan voting and an internal panel of experts from both Manchester City and Puma.

First-team players Ederson, Stefan Ortega, and Rico Lewis already gave the tool a spin, cooking up a goalkeeper jersey inspired by the netting of a goal.

The splashy reveal comes at a rather tense moment for City, with the team suffering an uncharacteristic slump on the pitch while awaiting the verdict on alleged Premier League financial rule breaches.

Why it matters

We think this is one of the sharpest mainstream marketing executions of generative AI yet, shifting AI from an abstract sandbox into an actual retail supply chain.

Usually, fan-designed kits mean voting on two pre-approved colors or submitting Photoshop files only graphic designers could handle. Constraining a text-to-image model around exact kit templates lowers the technical bar to zero while keeping the outputs somewhat manufacturable.

For rivals like Adidas and Nike, City and Puma just raised the bar for fan engagement. Kits are massive cash cows, and turning the design process into an interactive digital event gives supporters emotional skin in the game years before the product even drops.

The real test will be physical execution. What looks incredible in a digital preview often falls flat when translated to sweat-wicking synthetic fabrics and strict league badge regulations. If the panel of experts sanitizes the fan's winning prompt into a safe, boring corporate jersey, it will expose the exercise as mere marketing theater. But if they pull it off, expect crowdsourced AI kits to become the new normal across professional sports.