The Hurling Jerseys Behind the 2026 All-Star Nominations
The 2026 hurling All-Star nominations are out, and with the awards gala set for the RDS in Dublin on Friday 30 October, the shortlist reads like a league table of the season just gone. All-Ireland champions Limerick lead the way with 13 nominees, beaten finalists Galway have 11, Cork have seven and Clare six. Diarmaid Byrnes and Gearoid Hegarty of Limerick are up for Hurler of the Year alongside Cork's Brian Hayes.
Those four counties are the story of the shortlist. They are also, if you look at it the way a jersey collector does, a tour of the most recognisable hurling jerseys in the country — a run of colours so settled that you could name the county from a sleeve across a crowded clubhouse.
The GAA county jerseys behind the shortlist
What makes hurling's top counties so easy to spot is that their colours have barely moved in generations. The design around them changes season to season, but the base palette is close to fixed, and that permanence is exactly what makes a county jersey collectible. The same cut and collar that separate the codes — something we got into in our look at hurling versus Gaelic football jerseys — sit on top of colours that a county has worn for the best part of a century.
Limerick: the green of the moment
Limerick's green and white is the jersey of the era. A county that spent decades in the wilderness has turned its colours into the most familiar sight in modern hurling, and 13 All-Star nominations in a single season tells you why. For a collector, a Limerick jersey from this golden run is one of the clearest examples of a shirt gaining meaning in real time: these are the colours that will date a shelf to the late 2020s the way a baggy 1990s jersey dates one to its own decade.
Galway: maroon and white
Galway's maroon is one of the GAA's genuinely distinctive colours — there is no mistaking it for anyone else's — and 11 nominations off the back of reaching the All-Ireland final keep the western county firmly in the frame. Maroon and white is a palette that photographs beautifully and ages well, which is part of why Galway jerseys tend to hold their place in collections.
Cork: the blood and bandage
Cork's red is the oldest story on the list. The county's red-and-white — the famous blood and bandage — is one of the most iconic looks in all of Gaelic games, and seven nominations, led by Hurler of the Year contender Brian Hayes, mean the Rebels are back near the top of the conversation. Few jerseys carry as much history in a single colour.
Clare: saffron and blue
Clare's saffron and blue round out the leading four with six nominations. It is the most unusual palette of the group and, for that reason, often the one that catches a new collector's eye — a bright, warm colourway that stands apart from the greens, maroons and reds around it.
Why the colours sit still
County colours in the GAA are not a marketing decision renewed every few years; they come from club roots, diocesan links and a century of habit, and counties change them only rarely and reluctantly. We pulled that history apart in our piece on why counties wear the colours they do. The short version is that the colour is the identity and the jersey is just this year's version of it — which is the single most important thing to understand if you collect.
It is why a nominations list doubles as a jersey guide. When you see that Limerick, Galway, Cork and Clare dominated the 2026 hurling season, you already know what the shelf looks like: green, maroon, red, saffron. The All-Stars simply tell you which of those colours did the most damage this year.
What the All-Stars mean for a collector
An All-Star-heavy season is the kind of year that makes a particular jersey matter later. The shirts worn in a championship a county remembers — a first final in a generation, a Hurler of the Year campaign, an unbeaten run — are the ones people hunt for afterwards. They stop being last season's kit and start being a marker of a moment, which is the whole engine behind the collecting market. For more on which shirts earn that status, our rundown of the most iconic GAA jerseys of all time is a good place to start.
Hurling is the harder code to collect, too. There is no mystery hurling box on the market, so hurling jerseys are largely a matter of county shops, resale and patience. The Gaelic football side is different: if it is football colours you are after, our Gaelic football shirt box is built around exactly that thrill of not knowing which county turns up — the collector's version of a championship draw. For hurling, the nominations list is your shopping list: it tells you which counties' colours are worth tracking before this season fades into the next.
The winners will be confirmed at the RDS on 30 October. By then the jerseys behind the shortlist will already be doing what the best county jerseys always do — turning a season's results into something you can hang on a wall.