Hull City are back in the Premier League for the first time since 2017, and with them comes one of the most distinctive colour schemes in English football. Black and amber, worn in stripes, hoops or as a plain amber body with black trim, has belonged to the club since its foundation, and the nickname it produced, the Tigers, has shaped everything from the crest to the most notorious kit ever worn in the English league. This is the story of the Hull City kit: where the colours came from, what the club has done with them, and the shirt it wears in the top flight in 2026/27.
Why amber?
Hull City were founded in 1904, late for a city of Hull’s size, and adopted black and amber almost immediately. The usual explanation is that amber was chosen to stand apart from the city’s two rugby league clubs, Hull FC in black and white and Hull Kingston Rovers in red and white, and that black was kept as the trim; another links the colours directly to the tiger. Whatever the origin, the combination produced the Tigers nickname within a few seasons, and the tiger’s head has been on the crest in one form or another since the 1940s.
Anlaby Road, Boothferry Park and the long wait
For most of the twentieth century Hull City wore their colours in the second and third tiers, first at Anlaby Road and from 1946 at Boothferry Park, a ground with a railway station on its doorstep and a supermarket built into one end. The club came close to the top flight in the 1900s and again in the early 1970s but never made it, and by the 1990s they were struggling in the fourth tier and in the courts. The kits of that era are collected for their unusualness rather than their success, above all the 1992 to 1994 home shirt, which printed a full tiger-stripe pattern across the amber body. It is regularly voted among the worst kits in English football and sells out every time it is reissued.
The KC Stadium and Windass at Wembley
The move to the KC Stadium in 2002, now the MKM Stadium, gave the club a modern home and, within six years, a first promotion to the top flight. Dean Windass, a Hull-born striker in his late thirties, scored the only goal of the 2008 play-off final against Bristol City with a volley at Wembley, and the amber Umbro shirt of that season became the club’s most-worn design. Hull spent two seasons in the Premier League, memorably beating Arsenal at the Emirates in their first, went down in 2010, and returned under Steve Bruce in 2013.
The name that nearly changed
The second Premier League spell produced the club’s most visible kit controversy. Owner Assem Allam proposed renaming the club Hull Tigers in 2013, arguing the name was more marketable, and the supporters’ campaign against it went as far as the Football Association, which rejected the change in 2014. The shirts of that period carried the tiger crest more prominently than ever, and the argument about what the club was called was in part an argument about the kit. Hull reached the 2014 FA Cup final in the middle of it, leading Arsenal 2-0 after eight minutes before losing 3-2 in extra time.
2016, 2017 and the fall
A third promotion came through the play-offs in 2016, again by a single goal at Wembley, this time against Sheffield Wednesday, but the 2016/17 season ended in relegation and the club spent the next nine years in the second and third tiers. The drop to League One in 2020 lasted one season. Under Acun Ilıcalı, who bought the club in 2022, Hull came within three points of the play-offs in 2024, then slid, and in May 2025 avoided relegation to the third tier only on goal difference.
2026: McBurnie and the richest game
Twelve months later Hull were at Wembley again. Sergej Jakirović’s side finished sixth, beat Millwall in the play-off semi-final, and faced Middlesbrough in a final overshadowed by the Southampton spying affair that saw the Saints thrown out of the competition and Boro reinstated. The match was settled in the fifth minute of stoppage time, when Oli McBurnie tapped in after a goalkeeping error to give Hull a 1-0 win and a return to the Premier League worth an estimated £205 million. It was the club’s third play-off final and its third 1-0 win.
The 2026/27 kit
The shirt Hull wear on their return is amber with black trim, the traditional balance, and it carries one distinction no other Premier League shirt can claim: at £64, it is the cheapest adult replica in the division, one pound below Brentford, Crystal Palace and Ipswich and £26 below Tottenham. For a club whose supporters have just paid for a decade of disappointment, that pricing has been noticed. The away kit follows the club’s habit of using black as a base with amber detail.
The crest that lost its name
The Allam era’s most lasting kit change was to the crest. In 2014, having failed to rename the club, the owner introduced a badge that carried the tiger’s head alone, with the words Hull City removed entirely, and it appeared on the shirt for five seasons. Supporters voted in 2019 on a replacement, and the crest that has been worn since restores the club’s name above the tiger, with the founding year below. It is the crest on the shirt that returns to the Premier League, and the club’s decision to put the name back is as much a part of the story as the promotion.
The MKM Stadium on a match day
Visiting supporters returning to Hull for the first time since 2017 will find the ground unchanged: a neat, single-tier bowl of 25,000 on the western edge of the city, a twenty-minute walk from Hull Paragon station or a short bus ride, with the away end in the North Stand. The city centre has more to offer than its reputation suggests, particularly around the Old Town and the marina, and the away ticket, capped at £30, is one of the better-value trips of the season.
What the colours mean now
Amber and black have a practical advantage that Hull have never fully exploited: nobody else in the Premier League wears them. Wolves are old gold, Watford are yellow, and neither is in the division this season. In a league of reds, blues and whites, the Tigers’ shirt is the one that cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s, and the club’s return gives the colour a national audience for the first time in nearly a decade.
Whether the 2026/27 shirt is remembered like the 2008 Umbro or forgotten like the 2016/17 relegation kit depends on what happens in it. The colours, at least, will not be the problem. For the latest Premier League team news and analysis, visit our homepage.
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