Germany's Adidas Farewell Kit: The End of a 70-Year Shirt Marriage
Published 4 September 2026 · By Dermot McGuckin, News Editor
It is not often a football shirt gets a proper send-off. This one has. Adidas has confirmed that Germany will pull on a specially made farewell kit for their remaining games of 2026 — the last time Die Mannschaft take the pitch in the three stripes before Nike takes over the DFB deal from 2027. A partnership that started back in 1954 is being closed with its own bespoke shirt, and for anyone who cares about kit culture, that is a moment worth marking.
If reading this has you itching to add a piece of German kit history to your own collection, our mystery football shirt box is stuffed with authentic shirts from clubs and countries across the game — the kind of retro and modern strips that get harder to find the moment a deal like this ends.
A farewell kit, and why that is rare
Manufacturers change all the time. What almost never happens is a brand and a nation marking the split with a one-off shirt built purely to say goodbye. Adidas CEO Björn Gulden confirmed the plan, and leaked images point to a predominantly black design — though the finer details are still emerging and worth treating as unconfirmed until the official reveal. The point is not the colourway. The point is that a “last dance” shirt is, by definition, a limited moment in time — and those are exactly the shirts collectors chase years later.
Seven decades in three stripes
Adidas has kitted out Germany's national teams since 1954, the year of the “Miracle of Bern”. Across that run, Germany lifted the men's World Cup four times — in 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014 — every one of them in Adidas. Few partnerships in world sport are so tightly wound into a country's football identity. When you picture a classic Germany shirt, you are almost certainly picturing three stripes on the shoulders.
The strips that defined the bond
The 1990 home shirt, with its bold black-red-gold chevron sweeping across the chest, is one of the most replicated designs in football history. The 2014 winners' shirt and the various tournament greens sit alongside it in the memory. That back catalogue is precisely why a final Adidas-era shirt carries weight — it closes a story fans have watched unfold their whole lives.
The collector's angle: why a “last” shirt matters
Here is the Shirt in a Box take. The football-shirt market rewards two things above all: scarcity and story. A farewell kit has both baked in from day one. It will only ever be worn across a short window of fixtures, it marks the definitive end of an era, and it will never be reissued as an ongoing template. Compare that with a standard home shirt that a brand keeps in rotation for two seasons and you can see why the “last of the line” strips tend to hold their appeal.
You do not need to chase every release to build a collection with real character. Sometimes the smarter move is to hold the shirts that sit at the end of an era — the final Adidas Germany, the last shirt under an old sponsor, the closing design of a beloved template. Those are the ones people ask about later.
The Nike era begins
From 2027, Nike becomes the DFB's kit supplier, reportedly having outbid Adidas to land one of the most prestigious deals in the sport. It is a genuine shift in the football-kit landscape: a German brand's most famous national partnership passing to its biggest American rival. Whatever the new shirts look like, they will be measured against seven decades of history — a tough act to follow.
For now, though, the story is the goodbye. Germany's farewell shirt is a small, deliberate full stop on one of football's great manufacturer marriages. If you have ever wanted a slice of that history in your wardrobe, an era ending is usually the best reminder to go looking.
Facts on the Adidas–DFB partnership and the 2027 Nike switch are drawn from multiple kit and sports-business outlets; leaked design details remain unconfirmed pending the official launch.