The most noteworthy NWSL kits of 2026: Disco, a Lady Liberty fever dream and more

"In the late 1800s, long before most of America was electrified, affluent homeowners in pockets of the US hung elaborate, mirrored fixtures from their ceilings to amplify the effect of the dozens of candles they often used to light their homes. A few decades later, Louis Bernard Woeste of Newport, Kentucky, patented his own creation, the myriad reflector."

"His pitch to consumers, printed in the pages of a local newspaper in 1922, feels like a fever dream. [It] will change a hall into a brilliant fairyland of flashing, changing, living colors, Woeste wrote, a place of a million colored sparks, darting and dancing, chasing one another into every nook and corner filling the hall with dancing fireflies of a thousand hues."

"At the peak of production, the club says, 90% of the world's disco balls were made in the city. Louisville's Disco Kit draws on the city's history. The city's unique drawl is represented, too, in a small badge on the jersey which reads made in Looavul."

All 16 NWSL clubs unveiled new kits for the 2026 season, marking the first year the league allowed select teams to create third kits. The league encouraged clubs to explore connections to their home cities through their designs. Boston Legacy and Denver Summit, the league's new debutant teams, received initial home and away kits as part of this collection. The resulting designs show varying levels of success in capturing local identity and heritage. Racing Louisville's Disco Kit exemplifies the creative approach, drawing inspiration from Louisville's historical role in disco ball manufacturing, with the kit featuring design elements and a badge reading 'made in Looavul' that references the city's distinctive accent and cultural significance.

Read at www.theguardian.com