Arsenal will wear their red home kit in Saturday’s Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain, ending any doubt over whether they would be forced into a changed strip in Budapest. It is the first time the club will play a European Cup final in their home colours.
The decision matters now because the final is days away, and Arsenal are the away team for the 2026 showpiece after being placed on the blue path in the knockout-phase draw in February. The club will use this season’s red home shirt, not the new adidas home kit released earlier in the month, when it faces the holders at the end of a campaign that has taken it through a demanding run to the last match.
Arsenal reached the final by beating Atletico Madrid 2-1 on aggregate in the semi-final. For supporters, the confirmation settles a small but visible piece of the build-up: they will see the team in red, the colour most closely tied to the club, rather than in blue or another alternative strip on the biggest night of the season.
There had been suggestions that Paris Saint-Germain’s strip, which contains some red, could have pushed Arsenal into wearing a different kit even though the English side had already been assigned the away status in the draw. Arsenal’s away kit is blue, and its other likely fallback would have been the white and burgundy third kit, but that route has now been avoided. Bayern Munich would have forced Arsenal into blue had they been the opponent, underlining how close the final could have come to a different visual outcome.
This will also be a rare return to painful memory for Arsenal. Their first Champions League final came 20 years earlier, when they lost 2-1 to Barcelona in Paris after going down to ten men inside the opening 20 minutes. This time, they arrive as the underdogs on paper against Paris Saint-Germain, the current holders of European club football’s biggest prize, but with a final detail finally settled before kickoff. On Saturday in Budapest, the question will no longer be what Arsenal wear. It will be whether they can make the shirt matter more than the setting.
