A brief history of British & Irish Lions kit designs from the days before the iconic red jersey
With its red shirt, white shorts, dark blue socks and green turnovers representing the four nations who comprise the team, that famous British & Irish Lions kit is just as iconic as New Zealand’s all-black design and South Africa’s green and gold. It’s not, however, as old as you might think.
Indeed, up until World War II, the Lions wore a variety of different designs, notable for different configurations of red, white and blue, and – for most of that time – forgetting the Irish green entirely.
Here we look back at the history and evolution of Lions’ kit designs, from 1888 through to the present day.
Have the British & Irish Lions always played in red?
While red has always been part of the British & Irish Lions kit, the current iconic colour scheme didn’t debut until 1950, some 62 years after they played their first match.
For the very first tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1888, the Lions wore shirts with broad red, white and blue hoops, paired with white shorts and dark socks. Then, for their South African jaunts in 1891 and 1896, they took the field in red and white hooped shirts, with dark blue shorts.
There was another new design in Australia in 1899, when the Lions introduced dark blue shirts adorned with thin red and white hoops. England wore an updated version of this shirt in a 1999 international against Australia, marking the centenary of the Wallabies’ very first Test, which had been played against the Lions in Sydney.
The one-off kit England wore to face Australia in 1999 was a tribute to an old British & Irish Lions kit (David Rogers /Allsport)
In 1908, Ireland and Scotland decided to give the tour of Australia and New Zealand a miss. The Lions subsequently adopted red shirts with a thick red band across the middle, with the blue nowhere to be seen.
The blue was back with a vengeance for the 1910 trip to Argentina, however, where the Lions wore dark blue shirts, white shorts and red socks. This design would remain the standard until 1938, albeit with lengthy hiatuses for the two world wars.
Related: All you need to know about the 2025 British & Irish Lions tour to Australia
But this long-running design proved controversial, most famously in 1930 when the Lions visited New Zealand for the first time in two decades. The kit clashed with the famous All Blacks livery, meaning that the Kiwi side grudgingly agreed to wear an all-white strip. A group of Irish players, led by lock Jack Beamish, also noted that the Lions kit contained no green, a situation that was rectified with the belated addition of a green flash to the socks. By 1938, this had become the familiar green turnover that has remained ever since.
You’ll have to take our word for it but the Lions’ classic red, white, blue and green design made its debut in 1950 (Staff/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
When the Lions reassembled after World War II in 1950, they ran out in Australia and New Zealand wearing that now-iconic combination of red shirts, white shorts, blue socks and green turnovers. Aside from manufacturer flourishes and shirt/short sponsors, it’s remained largely unchanged for the last 75 years.
A version of the famous four-quartered badge design, meanwhile, made its first appearance in 1924, before becoming permanent from the 1936 tour of Argentina onwards.
Do the modern Lions ever wear a change kit on tour?
While it’s now commonplace for the away team to wear a change kit in the event of a clash – even in the Six Nations – historically it was the home team that switched in rugby. The old tradition survives with the British & Irish Lions, who tend to stay in their familiar kit, even when their hosts usually play in red – for example, the Queensland Reds, the Lions (the South African version) and the Crusaders have all worn alternative kits on recent tours.
Despite their name, the Queensland Reds changed out of their traditional red kit when they hosted the British & Irish Lions this year (David Rogers/Getty Images)
This doesn’t seem unreasonable, seeing as the British & Irish Lions only turn out once every four years, and every single one of their tour fixtures is an away match. It’s also telling that kit manufacturers Canterbury haven’t marketed a replica change kit for this tour – though various training/warm-up designs might fit the bill if red really isn’t your colour.
Canterbury British and Irish Lions shirt for Australia 2025 | £81.99 £70.00
The new jersey for next year’s tour has been released and it features a new deeper shade of red and some connected technology on every top that allows fans to scan and access an app.
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