Rangers kit leak: Ibrox fans in no doubt on verdict | OneFootball

The secret’s out—Rangers’ new 25/26 Umbro away shirt has leaked. It’s fair to say that it hasn’t exactly electrified the fanbase. After Castore exited the scene as kit supplier, Umbro has stepped in with what looks almost like a classic design but is really quite a timid one. The shirt is largely white and has the trademark red and blue panels across the chest, neck, and shoulders. It’s kind of a throwback to the olden days of football jerseys—white base, club colors splashed around, nearly replicas of the true-blue (or red) and insert-your-team-here (yet always classic) up top. The Rangers’ fan half of my brain thought this might be a reference to the 1992 away kit. Meanwhile, when I half-closed my eyes, I imagined the other side in short sleeves like our “golden era” of the late 2000s.

The online fanbase is abuzz since these pictures surfaced around late April 2025. Some of the faithful see glimmers of inspiration reminiscent of the 2008 away kit—a period in which the club made some daring but welcome sartorial choices. Others are, to put it mildly, not as pleased. Some call it “rotten” and “cheap.” Still others have made comparisons to a Power Rangers uniform. Ouch! This is a shirt truly in the realm of the divisive. A horizontal red band across the chest adds some punch to an otherwise reasonably safe design (Chris, 2025), but still, it’s at best a “middle third” in terms of both the innovative and the hi-vis quotient.

Let’s be real: football shirts aren’t just cloth; they’re like battle armor. Iconic Rangers shirts of old made their fans feel invincible before heading into Ibrox or Celtic Park. This new Umbro attempt? It comes off like a player who showed up ready but without their boots, and that’s a Rangers player without any killer instinct (MacRae, 2025). Have they played it too safe? Is this a shirt anyone would wear with, say, a blue pair of jeans or even just as part of their usual casual chic? Not really, it seems. The other issue is that we just don’t know what sort of rhythm Umbro is going to find after this transitional season, replacing Castore (returning after a more-than-decent year as a kit provider) in the next few weeks—again, leading to a transition in the rhythm of the pieces being put together for the team’s new look in the next few years.

And then there’s the sponsor logo, which makes an appearance on the front in big, bold letters. Sure, it’s practical. But if you’re going to stick UNIBET on this shirt, maybe that should have been in red or white. Because this is the point where the Rangers fans I’ve seen comment online are more or less in agreement: this is a blue against a very wide field of white, and for most of them, that doesn’t look too good. Maybe it’s the idea that when they imagine wearing this in a big game, corporate branding has effectively turned their own kit into something that looks more like a corporate brochure than something you’d go to war with in an Old Firm battle or a European night under the floodlights.

What comes next? Will Umbro elevate the design in time for July? Are Rangers fans going to see this low-key kit as an essential part of their identity and embrace it? It seems unlikely to me. Fans want their shirts to do a couple of things at once: they want them to carry a few van-loads of history and to romp around in the present. The current version of the away jersey is doing neither of these well. It looks too empty, too much like a placeholder waiting to be filled with something more meaningful. It’s not the way we expect our trophy-winning club to appear.