Sometimes, the obvious answer is the right one – this is their home kit for 2026-27.
“The game’s gone!” I hear you cry, “This is woke nonsense!”
Well, in fact this kit is marking the 50th anniversary of the first time they wore the white shirt with blue and red sash as their primary outfit. Apart from 1937-38, red and blue stripes had only been seen three years before that.
Palace’s original colours are claret and sky blue, worn by the 1905 iteration from their foundation, but if they were turn out in such a strip now, it’s likely they would be unfavourably compared with Aston Villa, Burnley or West Ham United.
We all have different ideas of what’s traditional – as outlined by our friend Jay Mansfield in this article.
If anybody did describe something like this as being ‘woke nonsense’, they’d need shooting.
I think they should stick with it, it is a far cleaner design than the red and blue stripes (which were originally a Barca-wannabe kit anyhow). Funnily enough they had already gone down the “we are Real Madrid” route in the mid 60’s. They could vary it by going down the Players No6 route if need be too.
There was a definite trend in the 70s and 80s for teams with two-colour kits to switch to white with the two colours as trim. As well as Palace, Bradford had a few years in white, Scunthorpe tried it for a bit, and Luton made the switch permanent for nearly 30 years. Of course the real originators of the style were Leeds back in 1960!
I remember Palace revived the sash as a home kit as recently 2008, when they wore Erreà kits. They then dropped it for a bog standard Nike template in blue and red which had been in the teamwear catalogue for two years.
To be fair to Luton, white was their usual home kit colour with black shorts until 1973, when they switched to orange for a few years. They reverted back to white in 1979, but with navy and orange as trim colour.
They only made orange as first-choice permanent in 2009 after they fell into non-league and thought changing back to tangerine would revive their fortunes.