Everton will wear a third kit next season that departs from convention in one notable respect: the club crest has been removed from the chest, replaced by a pentagon symbol representing Prince Rupert's Tower. The detail was reported by 90min, which described the design as drawing inspiration from the River Mersey.
Prince Rupert's Tower, the 18th-century lock-up that has appeared on the Everton crest for decades, is one of the most recognisable emblems in English football. Its presence on the badge traces the club's roots in Everton village, the Liverpool district from which the club takes its name. Stripping the full crest and distilling that heritage down to a single geometric motif is an unusual creative decision, and one that will inevitably draw scrutiny from supporters accustomed to seeing the tower framed within the traditional design.
Kit releases have become a significant commercial and cultural moment for Premier League clubs, and manufacturers have grown increasingly willing to experiment with identity elements — typefaces, crests, colour palettes — in pursuit of designs that stand apart in a crowded market. An abstract or simplified badge treatment is not unheard of, but it remains uncommon at this level, particularly for a club with as long and layered a visual history as Everton's.
The 2025/26 season will also be Everton's first at their new stadium on Bramley-Moore Dock, a development that has been framed by the club as a broader reset. A third kit that gestures toward the waterfront geography of that new home — the River Mersey runs alongside the site — carries an obvious symbolic logic, even if the execution will divide opinion.
Whether the wider design is well received will become clear once supporters see it in full. Third kits, by their nature, are worn sparingly and tend to attract a different kind of attention than home or away strips — judged as much as artefacts as functional garments. The removal of the crest, however, is the kind of detail that tends to generate a reaction well before the first whistle.