GAA County Jerseys of 2026: The Colours Behind the All-Star Nominations
The 2026 PwC GAA/GPA All-Star nominations landed this week, with the banquet set for the RDS on Friday 30 October. Read them as a selection panel does and you get a fair map of the best players in the country. Read them the way a jersey-watcher does and you get something else: a roll-call of the GAA county jerseys that defined the year. Two colours ran the season — the green of Limerick and the green-and-red of Mayo — and the shortlist puts numbers on it.
Limerick green, once again
On the hurling side the picture is familiar. Limerick, the 2026 All-Ireland champions, lead the nominations with 13 players on the 45-man list, ahead of beaten finalists Galway on 11. Cork follow with seven, Clare with six, then Dublin (three), Offaly and Waterford (two each) and Kilkenny (one). Two Treaty men, Gearóid Hegarty and Diarmaid Byrnes, are shortlisted for Hurler of the Year alongside Cork's Brian Hayes.
For anyone who follows the kit as closely as the scoreline, Limerick's plain green has become the defining hurling jersey of the era — the shirt you now picture first when you think of a September in Croke Park. That is exactly how a modern jersey earns its place in the collector memory: not through a one-off special edition, but through a run of seasons where the same colour keeps turning up on the biggest day. Galway's maroon, Clare's saffron and blue and Kilkenny's black and amber all feature on the list too, a reminder that the hurling heartland still dresses in some of the most recognisable colours in Irish sport.
Mayo's green and red on top in football
The football list tells the story of a genuinely historic year. Mayo top it with 11 nominations after winning their first Sam Maguire in 75 years — the kind of result that changes what a county jersey means overnight. Beaten finalists Kerry have seven, and Dublin, back in the semi-finals, take five. David Clifford is up for Footballer of the Year against Mayo's Ryan O'Donoghue and Jack Carney.
Mayo's green and red has spent decades as the jersey of near-misses; in 2026 it becomes the jersey of champions, and that shift is precisely what turns a shirt into a keepsake. We wrote earlier about how 75 years made Mayo's green and red an iconic GAA jersey — the All-Star haul is the on-field footnote to that long story. Kerry's green and gold and Dublin's sky blue sit just behind, two of the most-worn county colours in the country and a fixture on any football terrace.
What the nominations say about GAA county jerseys
Eight counties are represented on each 45-man list, and that spread is the interesting part. The All-Stars are a merit list, not a kit chart, but because success clusters, they end up tracking which GAA county jerseys have been in front of the biggest crowds all summer. The counties that dominate the nominations are the counties whose jerseys sell, get worn to the pub on final day, and eventually get hunted down years later by collectors who want the shirt from a season that mattered.
It is also a useful corrective to the idea that only retro shirts are collectible. A current jersey from a championship-winning season — Limerick 2026, Mayo 2026 — is a future classic being made in real time. The women's game works the same way; we looked at that recently in a piece on the county jerseys behind the Ladies Football All-Stars, and the logic carries straight across to the men's shortlist.
From the shortlist to the shirt drawer
If the nominations have you thinking about your own collection, the honest advice is to buy the jersey of a season you actually remember rather than chasing whatever is trending. A shirt from the year your county finally got over the line is worth more to you than any neutral's grail. That is a large part of the appeal of a mystery Gaelic football shirt box, too — you take a punt on a county jersey you might never have picked yourself, and every so often you end up with the colours of a team having its year. (It is a Gaelic football box; there is no hurling version, so the hurling fans reading this will have to keep an eye on the county shops for the Treaty green.)
The banquet on 30 October will hand out the actual awards. But the nominations already tell the kit story of 2026 cleanly enough: Limerick green in hurling, Mayo's green and red in football, and a supporting cast of maroon, saffron, black-and-amber, green-and-gold and sky blue that keeps the GAA the best-dressed championship going. Whatever county you follow, this is a season worth keeping a jersey from.