FC Barcelona have revealed their new home top for next season, and it’s another in a recent string of non-traditional designs from the Catalan giants.

At the same time, this shirt manages to check all the boxes a Barça shirt should have, but is also quite different from what we’ve seen in the past.

Reviewing the Barcelona 2022/23 home kit

The new strip is predominantly a dark navy blue, with the color featuring on the sleeves, collar, shorts and socks (FCB have given us a preview of the entire uniform, which always helps frame how well the design really looks – how it will appear on the pitch). The club has forgone the traditional Blaugrana dark red and blue vertical stripes, and instead they are presented in a brighter red and light blue, alternated with the navy color.

The shirt uses the Nike raglan sleeve cut we’re seeing a bunch of this year, and it does feature a texture on the fabric, but it appears to be unique to this Barcelona top – it’s not that thumbprint-looking texture seen on many a Nike shirt recently. In addition to that texture, there is a subtle tonal pattern of geometric designs throughout the body of the shirt.

Those pattern designs and color choices are, according to the club, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, representing the rebirth of the city at that time and its revitalized connection to the sea. You can definitely see a little of Frank Gehry’s iconic waterfront Olympic Fish sculpture influenced in the criss-cross texture. The kit launch has been presented with the tagline “The Flame Lives On,” honoring the spirit of the games and energy of the city during that important event in their history. Of course the local connection to what the games meant to those in the city is most important, but a lot of people’s biggest memory from those games (myself included), was the epic lighting of the Olympic cauldron with a bow and arrow. A little nod to that would’ve been a neat touch (maybe as one of those little jock tag Easter eggs at the bottom, or an inner collar design).

The club also debuts a new front sponsor, Spotify, rendered in what they are calling a “sesame” color, along with the Nike swoosh and rear back logo of UNHCR/ACNUR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). As always, the club showcases pride in their regional culture and independence, this time with the Catalan flag stripes on the upper back.

Barcelona’s home shirt is available via Kitbag and other online soccer stores.

Grade: B-

This is a tough one. You have to give Barcelona credit for being able to take a chance with their primary shirt design. But I feel like the choice to go with the double blues, and the beige/sesame color of the sponsor marks, hurts this one. Picking either the navy or the lighter blue and sticking with it, and doing the sponsor logos in their regular yellow from the badge, would’ve made for a stronger overall design – one that looked more definitively Barça – while still being able to work in all the textural details celebrating the Olympics anniversary.