JUVENTUS REVIVES 1898 PINK FOR NEW ADIDAS AWAY KIT

The photo lands on a Tuesday afternoon with no press conference behind it, just a four frame carousel and a caption from adidasfootball that reads plain. Bold in pink, effortlessly cool, a fresh look for the latest away jersey. This is not a nostalgia play, it is a business move dressed as one, and the business behind it is worth far more than the shirt on the rack. Juventus will wear this jersey on the road through the 2026/27 season, and for the first time in decades the away color is not a stand in shade, it is pink, the exact color the club wore before it ever touched a zebra stripe.

No hype video, no player unveiling at a rooftop event, just the caption and the carousel. That detail, the quiet release of a color with actual history behind it, is the real story here, better than any "new season, new shirt" line adidas could have run.

1898 Wore Pink Before Turin Wore Stripes

Juventus played its first three seasons in pink shirts paired with a black tie, not the black and white bars people associate with the club today. The team switched only after an English member of the club, tired of the pink fading in the wash, ordered a fresh batch of shirts from Nottingham, and Notts County sent over its black and white stripes instead. Everything since 1903 has run through that swap. The new away jersey does not copy the 1898 shirt outright, it reinterprets it, using a base adidas calls True Pink layered with a tonal, engineered zebra print rather than the club's usual bold bars.

Fifty Million Euros Bought That Shoulder Space

adidas currently pays Juventus a guaranteed minimum of 50.1 million euros a year through this season, a figure built from a flat fee near 43 million plus royalties tied to merchandise sales. That number is not going up next year, it is going down. The two sides already signed the follow on deal, worth 408 million euros running through June 2037, averaging roughly 40.8 million euros a year, a lower figure that tracks with Juventus's rockier stretch off the pitch since the last contract was struck. Read the away kit against that backdrop and the pink starts to look like a marketing lever more than a design whim, a way to sell nostalgia hard while the guaranteed check gets smaller.

Juventus is not adidas's only bet built on heritage this year. The brand has leaned on football's back catalogue across its whole range of new sneaker silhouettes at Sneakersnstuff, pulling old football textures into product lines that have nothing to do with a match pitch.

Zebra Print Replaces Zebra Stripes

The shirt swaps Juventus's usual black and white bars for a tonal zebra pattern printed across the front, sleeves, and back of that True Pink base. Black trim runs the collar, the cuffs, and the three stripes across the shoulders, the sharpest contrast point on the whole jersey. adidas built the shirt around its Climacool plus ventilation system, the same technology family it puts on its top tier match day gear, not just the retail version fans actually buy. Every previous Juventus away kit under this deal has stuck close to convention, a secondary color with a stripe pattern lifted straight from the home shirt. This one breaks that habit on purpose.

The Fee Only Shrinks If This Shirt Sells

The replica version of the shirt lists at 99.99 dollars through retailers tracking the release, while the authentic, player cut version runs 159.99 dollars. Juventus sells both through its own stores in Turin, Milan, and Rome, plus its online shop, the same channel adidas counts on every cycle to help offset that guaranteed fee. Merchandise royalties are baked into the deal's structure, which means a shirt that actually moves off shelves matters to adidas in a way a merely pretty one does not. adidas has spent real money proving it understands attention outside the stadium too, the same instinct behind putting a streamer next to Rayan Cherki for a hyperboost campaign rather than running a straight athlete ad. A pink shirt tied to 1898 is the football version of that same play, selling a story first and a stripe pattern second.

Here is the prediction. This jersey outsells the last two Juventus away kits combined, because pink carries a story the last two away colors never had, and because adidas needs the sell through numbers to justify locking in a reduced 40.8 million euro annual fee through 2037 instead of walking away. Watch the resale listings over the next month. If pairs of this shirt start moving above the 99.99 dollar retail price before the season even kicks off, that is adidas's bet paying out early.