El Clásico is not just a clash between two bitter rivals — LaLiga giants Barcelona and Real Madrid — but also a fixture involving two of the world’s most immediately recognizable teams.
Barcelona’s iconic Blaugrana (blue and red) striped jerseys provide a striking contrast to Real Madrid’s all-white kit whenever they meet on the pitch — like they will on Sunday in a match that will play a decisive role in who wins the league title (stream LIVE at 10:15 a.m. ET on ESPN+).
Over the years, both teams have blessed us with some iconic iterations of their famous home colors, as well as an array of stunning designs for their away shirts.
However, there have also been a few shockers that the players who wore them would no doubt rather forget.
Here is a combined ranking of the 10 best and 10 worst kits that Barcelona and Real Madrid have produced over the years.
BEST
10. Real Madrid: away, 2016-17 (Adidas)
This kit wasn’t met with immediate acceptance (purple?!) but skeptics were soon won over. It helped that Madrid wore the shirt in Cardiff on June 3, 2017, for one of their best-ever performances: the 4-1 humbling of Juventus in the UEFA Champions League final. Among all of Madrid’s European wins in the last decade, this might have been the best all-round display as Cristiano Ronaldo, Casemiro and Marco Asensio scored the goals and Isco pulled the strings, securing iconic status for the plush and regal-colored shirt.
9. Barcelona: home, 1999-2000 (Nike)
From time to time, Barça pay tribute to the club’s first-ever shirt, which was split into halves of blue and what the club calls “garnet red” rather than their now-famous vertical stripes. They did so to mark their 110th anniversary in 2008-09, when Pep Guardiola led a Lionel Messi-inspired Barça side to the treble. They are doing so again this season to celebrate the club turning 125 years old. Could that be a good sign? Both designs stem from the centenary shirt, worn in 1999-2000. The kit didn’t bring great success, but it did evoke fond memories of Rivaldo’s Ballon d’Or-winning time at Camp Nou.
8. Real Madrid: Champions League home, 2001-02 (Adidas)
Real Madrid won La Novena — their ninth European Cup — with one of the greatest goals ever scored in the competition: Zinedine Zidane’s picture-perfect volley in the final against Bayer Leverkusen at Hampden Park. And they did it wearing pristine white shirts, with no sponsor, harking back to the club’s 1950s heyday. The collars were all-white too and the sleeves were adorned only by Adidas’ three blue stripes. The shirt’s beauty lay in its audacious simplicity, just like Zidane’s volley.
7. Barcelona: fourth kit, 2019-22 (Nike)
Barça’s fourth kit was so popular in 2019-20 that it ended up sticking around for another two seasons. Barça have worn an array of different colors for their alternate jerseys throughout their history, but it’s the yellow and red of the Catalan flag, the Senyera, that they often return to. This one was a slight twist on the usual design, with the red lines swooshing down diagonally across the yellow, and was worn during Messi’s final years at the club.
6. Barcelona: home, 1989-92 (Meyba)
This kit is iconic because it is the one worn in the formative years by Johan Cruyff’s “Dream Team” — Guardiola, Ronald Koeman, Michael Laudrup, Romario, Hristo Stoichkov, et al. It was actually the home shirt in 1992 when they won their first European Cup, and while they didn’t wear it in the final — they wore an orange away kit — they did change into it for the celebrations. The kit designer, Meyba, is also significant. A local Barcelona company, it is enjoying a revival in recent years through its partnerships with lower-league clubs in Catalonia.
5. Barcelona: home, 1995-97 (Kappa)
Barça’s switch from Meyba to Kappa produced some memorable jerseys. The first design was worn between 1992-1995 and is best remembered as the shirt Romario wore when he scored a hat trick in a 5-0 Clásico win in 1994. A very slight variation of the kit was worn between 1995-1997. You’ll know the one. Picture Ronaldo Nazário’s stunning 47-goal season at the club as a 20-year-old in 1996-97. That one.
4. Real Madrid: away, 1999-00 (Adidas)
Madrid’s away kits don’t tend to be nearly as iconic as their white home shirts, but 1999-2000 was an exception. It was a rollercoaster season for Madrid: They signed striker Nicolas Anelka from Arsenal, gave legendary goalkeeper Iker Casillas his debut, replaced coach John Toshack with Vicente de Bosque and eventually finished a lowly fifth in LaLiga, but they also won the Champions League. They were wearing this Teka masterpiece — all-black with gold trim — when they beat Valencia 3-0 in Paris. It is among the fans’ most beloved shirts, conjuring up images of peak Roberto Carlos and Fernando Redondo, Steve McManaman’s volley, and Raul dancing round Valencia keeper Santi Cañizares.
3. Real Madrid: home, 2011-12 (Adidas)
This title win is known as the “league of the records.” No LaLiga side had ever reached 100 points or scored 121 goals. This Madrid team did both, besting Guardiola’s Barcelona in the process. The kit was as breathtaking as the team’s stats — Cristiano Ronaldo scored 60 goals in all competitions, Karim Benzema got 32 and Gonzalo Higuaín bagged 26, while José Mourinho’s side racked up scorelines of 7-1, a 6-0, a 5-0, and three 6-2s along the way. A gold-trimmed shirt for a golden team.
2. Real Madrid: home shirt, 2021-22 (Adidas)
Some kits can’t be separated from the games, and moments, when they were worn. This season featured Madrid’s most magical, inexplicable Champions League campaign, with comebacks against Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City on electric nights at the Santiago Bernabéu. And it featured this understated, low-key winner of a kit with a round neck, and blue and gold trim. Nothing revolutionary, but when you’re working with an all-white shirt, your palette is limited. Whichever performance was your favorite — Benzema’s hat trick against PSG, or Rodrygo‘s two goals in a minute against City — this shirt ensured they looked great doing it.
1. Barcelona: home 2010-11 (Nike)
What many consider to be Barcelona’s best-ever side had a stunning kit to match. The key to a good Barça home shirt is often simplicity: get the stripes right, add a couple of nice details and voila. The 2010-11 jersey — which ended with Messi inspiring Guardiola’s side to victory in the Champions League final against Manchester United — did just that. The stripes are well spaced and framed perfectly by the thick yellow trim, and the Unicef logo is nostalgic of a bygone era at the club, as this was the last season before they took on a commercial shirt sponsor.
WORST
10. Barcelona: home, 2017-18 (Nike)
Vertical Blaugrana stripes but with a slight twist: The burgundy lines get narrower as they expand out toward the blue flanks. On the pitch, things didn’t go so badly, though. Barça, under new coach Ernesto Valverde, won a LaLiga-Copa del Rey double. Their capitulation in the Champions League against Roma came in their turquoise away kit, too.
9. Real Madrid: away, 2015-16 (Adidas)
A grey kit, albeit not the worst one the club ever had (see below), thanks to its eye-catching green trim. In a season of crushing lows and memorable highs — losing 4-0 at home to Barcelona in El Clásico and coach Rafa Benítez being fired, followed by Zinedine Zidane’s arrival and ultimate Champions League triumph — this shirt was just a bit dull. The most notable thing about it was that it showed every patch of sweat.
8. Barcelona: home, 2019-20 (Nike)
Bad kits can sometimes be saved by good seasons, but that was not the case for Barça in 2019-20. There is always a reluctance from supporters to break away from tradition, and that was the case when a checkered shirt — Croatia-style — was released. What followed was a year that saw Valverde replaced by Quique Setién, who was then sacked after the league was lost to Real Madrid and Bayern Munich inflicted a shocking 8-2 defeat upon them in the Champions League. All of that in the midst of global pandemic. It’s a kit most will never want to see again.
7. Real Madrid: third, 2013-14 (Adidas)
Designers are unable to experiment too much with Madrid’s home kits — it’s white, after all — which leads them to pursue some increasingly adventurous color and design options for the team’s alternate jerseys. Hence, in 2013-14, they went for bright orange. The shirt earned unflattering comparisons with a traffic cone, or a high-visibility vest. It’s a shame, because it was an otherwise historic season, crowned by winning La Décima in Lisbon.
6. Real Madrid: third, 2014-15 (Adidas)
This dragon-print shirt — created by the Japanese high-end designer Yohji Yamamoto — was considered the height of fashion at the time. But in hindsight … doesn’t it look a bit tacky? Perhaps it was a shirt for the street, or the catwalk, but not the football pitch. Either way, Madrid had an underwhelming 2014-15, coming up short in both LaLiga and the Champions League, and coach Carlo Ancelotti lost his job. Yamamoto kept his, though, with his Y-3 collab range with Adidas still going strong.
5. Barcelona: home, 2021-22 (Nike)
The patchwork shirt design, supposedly based on the club’s badge, was already slightly strange, with a cross replacing the stripes on one side of the chest, but it’s the shorts that were committing all kinds of crimes. Each leg was a different color; it looked as bad as it sounds. Messi was probably relieved he never had to wear them, as he departed the same summer the kit was launched.
4. Real Madrid: third kit, 1996-97 (Kelme)
Back in the 90s, there were no rules when it came to kit designs and here is all the evidence you need. Divided into purple and white quarters, it’s covered with lots of little rectangles in a pattern that looks like a really chaotic game of Tetris. Yes, the Teka sponsor’s logo is iconic. Yes, the Kelme paws across the shoulders sparked a wave of nostalgia. And yes, Clarence Seedorf wore it. But even he, one of the coolest footballers who ever lived, couldn’t make this kit work.
3. Barcelona: away, 1997-98 (Kappa)
It’s as ghastly as it sounds: Orange, with a thick blue line down the middle and two narrower black lines on the outside. Even some of Barça’s more questionable away kits from the 1990s have experienced comebacks as retro cult classics in recent years. This is not one of them.
2. Real Madrid: third, 2005-06 (Adidas)
Think Galáctico-era Real Madrid, peak football box office, and you don’t think… grey. It’s not the right color for a side boasting Ronaldo Nazário, Zidane, David Beckham and Roberto Carlos, is it? Madrid’s 2005-06 season was a crushing disappointment, their second in a row without winning a single trophy. It was so bad, in fact, that club president Florentino Pérez was forced to resign (before returning three years later). If it wasn’t for the team’s form, this kit alone might have been grounds for resignation.
1. Barcelona: away, 2012-13 (Nike)
Away shirts can be hit-or-miss. What is frowned upon at the time often gets a second life years later, especially with the boom in retro designs. That is not true of Barça’s 2012-13 away shirt. Known colloquially as the ‘tequila sunrise’ away kit after the colorful cocktail, one glance will tell you why it hasn’t endured: yellow socks and shorts gradually turning orange as you reach the shoulders of the shirt. The idea probably sounded great when it came up — likely after one drink too many.
