Manchester City is undertaking a project that will allow football fans to reflect their imagination on the field. The club is holding a competition where fans can design their future jerseys using an AI-powered platform. The winning design will be worn by players as the club’s official third jersey for the 2026-2027 season and will also be available for sale to fans.
The club collaborated with its long-time sponsor, sportswear brand Puma, on this project. A “text-to-image” jersey design tool developed by Puma and supported by an artificial intelligence company called DeepObjects has been launched. Fans who want to use this tool start by creating an account on the platform and describing their dream design with text. Then, it can determine the style of the design that the artificial intelligence will create by choosing one of different styles such as “abstract,” “dreamy visions” or “emotional brush strokes.”
Puma AI Creator platform offers four different options for each design, and these designs are visualized on a virtual jersey. Users can personalize details such as collars, decoration colors and club emblems on the design. The platform provides its users with a total of 15 credits and each design costs one credit. However, users can only submit two designs to the competition. The competition will end on December 20.
The winning design will be determined by experts from Manchester City and Puma
The winning design will be determined by the votes of the fans and the evaluation of the expert staff of Manchester City and Puma. Manchester City announced that its players Ederson, Stefan Ortega and Rico Lewis designed a goalkeeper jersey using this platform and that the design was “inspired by the football net”. The club also stated that this jersey will be the first artificial intelligence design to be worn on the field.
This announcement comes at a less than pleasant time for Manchester City. The club is in the spotlight for its recent underperformance and is also awaiting the outcome of an investigation into allegations it breached Premier League financial rules.