Football Culture
Most clubs release three kits a season and most supporters assume the number is mandated by somebody. It is not. The Laws of the Game contain a single requirement about colour — that the two teams can be told apart from each other and from the officials — and every arrangement built on top of that, including the idea of a third kit at all, is competition regulation and commercial practice rather than football law.
Teams have more than one kit so that two sides never take the field in colours a player, an official or a spectator could confuse. A home kit is the club's usual identity; an away kit is the alternative it changes into when the home kit would clash; a third kit is a further option for the occasions when neither of the first two works, or when a competition requires something different.
What the Laws of the Game actually require is narrower than that, and worth stating exactly, because it is the foundation everything else sits on.
IFAB Law 4 states that the two teams must wear colours that distinguish them from each other and the match officials, and that each goalkeeper must wear colours distinguishable from the other players and the match officials. Law 4 does not mention home kits, away kits or third kits. It does not require any club to own a particular number of strips.
A home kit is the strip a club wears by default, in the colours it is identified with. It is the kit the club would prefer to wear in every match, and it is worn at home because the visiting team is the one conventionally expected to change.
Those colours are usually old and usually immovable. They are rarely protected by any rule — what protects them is that supporters treat them as the club's identity rather than as a design choice, and clubs that have tried to change them have generally discovered how strongly that is felt.
An away kit — also called a change strip — exists to be worn when the home kit would be too close to the opposition's. It is not primarily a design opportunity, although it has become one; it is the answer to a practical problem that is as old as organised league football.
The idea dates back further than most people expect. When the Football League required clubs to register distinct colours in 1891, that rule lasted a year before being replaced in 1892 with one that allowed clubs to share colours provided each held a second, all-white set to change into. The modern away kit is a direct descendant of that second set.
Because an away kit is defined by what it is not — not the home kit, and not the opposition's — it tends to be the freest of a club's strips. There is no tradition it has to honour, only a clash it has to avoid.
A third kit is a further alternative, worn when neither the home nor the away kit solves the clash. The classic case is a club whose home and away strips are, say, dark and light versions of similar colours, meeting an opponent that conflicts with both.
No Law of the Game requires a club to have one. Whether a third kit is needed, permitted or registered is set by the competition, and competitions differ. Take one worked example: Regulation 39.1 of the EFL Regulations 2025/26 requires each club, during the close season, to notify the league of its home and away kit — shirt, shorts and socks — and, in the regulation's own words, "if applicable any 'third' set of kit". Each registered set must differ visibly from and contrast with the others.
Those three words, "if applicable", are the whole answer. Home and away are registered because the club will have them; the third is registered only if there is one. The same regulations go on to allow a club to register a third kit at any point during the season rather than only in the close season, with a limit of one per season — which is a rule about how many you may add, not a requirement to have any.
In practice most professional clubs now release a third kit anyway, for a reason that has nothing to do with clashes: it is another shirt to sell. That is a commercial decision, and it is worth being clear that it is one rather than dressing it up as a regulatory necessity.
How the shirt came to be something sold rather than only worn is its own story, and it is the background to the paragraph above rather than a detail of it.
A clash is any situation where two sets of colours on the pitch are hard enough to tell apart that play could be affected. It is less obvious than it sounds, because a clash is not simply two teams wearing the same colour.
That last case is now addressed explicitly in competition rulebooks, though usually as guidance rather than as a trigger. The guidance accompanying Regulation 39.3 of the EFL Regulations 2025/26 tells clubs to have regard to the Football Association's guidance on helping those affected by colour blindness when choosing shirt, shorts and sock colours, and to hold enough registered kits that they can field a distinguishable combination for every fixture. The obligation is on the club's planning rather than on any single match.
Law 4's colour requirement is not only about the two teams. It requires that the teams be distinguishable from each other and from the match officials, which is why referees historically wore black and why officials now have several colours available to them.
The practical consequence is that a kit pairing can be fine between the two clubs and still need changing because one of them is too close to what the officials are wearing. Three parties have to be separable, not two.
Goalkeepers are treated separately in the Laws, and the requirement is stricter in one specific way: each goalkeeper must wear colours distinguishable from the other players and the match officials. That means distinguishable from both teams, not just from the opposition.
The reason is functional. A goalkeeper is the only player who may handle the ball inside their own penalty area, and an official needs to identify instantly whether the player who handled it was entitled to.
The Laws are also pragmatic about failure. If both goalkeepers end up wearing the same colour and neither has a spare shirt available, the referee allows the match to go ahead rather than abandoning it — a reminder that the requirement is there to let the game be played, not to provide grounds for stopping it.
It looks like a mistake and usually is not. There are several legitimate reasons a club plays at home in something other than its home strip.
The convention that the away team changes is strong, widely followed and not a Law. It is a default, and defaults have exceptions.
This is the distinction that most explanations of this topic collapse, and it is worth keeping clear. There are two separate layers of rule, and they do different jobs.
Because the second layer is written independently by each competition, its details genuinely vary — and they are also versioned. The EFL Regulations 2025/26 require clubs to register home, away and, if applicable, third kits during the close season, require each registered set to contrast with the others, and permit no change to the kits or their colour combinations once the season has started. They go further than most people realise: colours must be submitted for approval before kit is ordered, sample photographs of each combination must reach the league before the season starts, and the away club must send its chosen colours to the league, the referee and its opponents at least seven days before a match.
That rulebook even sets an order of precedence for resolving colours, running home outfield first, then away outfield, then the two goalkeepers, and finally the match officials. None of that is football law. It is one league's administration of the distinguishability requirement, for one season, and a club playing in several competitions can be subject to several different sets of kit rules at once.
Everything attributed to the EFL in this article is taken from the EFL Regulations 2025/26. Competition regulations are reissued each season, so the current edition may differ — check the edition for the season you care about rather than assuming this one still applies.
So "the rule" about kits is rarely one rule. If you want to know what applies to a specific match, the question is which competition it is in — not what football in general requires.
No. Law 4 requires that the two teams wear colours distinguishing them from each other and the match officials. How a club satisfies that — and how many strips it keeps in order to — is not specified by the Laws.
In practice, the competition's rules and the match officials. Because "distinguishable" is a judgement rather than a measurement, competitions tend to resolve expected clashes in advance and leave the rest to be settled on the day.
Frequently, yes. Where a clash exists in shirts but not shorts, or the reverse, competitions often allow clubs to combine elements of their registered sets — Regulation 39.3 of the EFL Regulations 2025/26 lets a home club wear "any combination of its registered kit" to avoid a potential clash. Note that this is about combining kits a club has already registered, not about assembling something new mid-season.
The Laws deal with it directly: if neither has a spare shirt, the referee allows the match to be played. The requirement exists to let the game proceed, not to prevent it.
Because shirts are sold as well as worn. A new design each season gives supporters a reason to buy, and that cycle is commercial rather than regulatory.
Not in the Laws of the Game. Competitions define what a club may register and when, and the term is best understood as the third strip a club has registered rather than as a category football law recognises.
The primary sources for the two layers of rule described above. The Law is quoted precisely. The EFL regulation is one competition's example, for one named season, and should not be read as applying to other competitions or other seasons.
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