The 31 Best Sports Uniforms of the Millennium
Close BannerClose00Days:00Hours:00Minutes:00SecondsWatch LiveGQ Bowl in NOLAStyleFrom the Heat’s Vice Nights bangers to France’s 2022 World Cup grails, we’re running through all the sickest, slickest, most stylish kits released since 2000.By Matthew RobersonFebruary 7, 2025Photographs: Getty Images; Collage: Gabe ConteSave this storySaveSave this storySaveAll products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.Believe it or not, we are now 25 years into the new millennium. In hindsight, distant eras like Y2K seem very quaint, while the pandemic will probably always feel like yesterday. Sports uniforms, for their part, have undergone quite the journey over the last quarter century, as pretty much every pro franchise has taken at least one wild (and sometimes misguided) swing.In the NBA, every team seemingly has ten jerseys now. MLB has introduced the lightning rod City Connect uniforms, with some of them proving better than the team’s main digs, and others turning heads for all the wrong reasons. The NFL remains fairly beholden to tradition, and with a few rare exceptions, most clubs have kept things fairly safe. The same is (mostly) true for the NHL, while soccer teams around the globe continue to be the leaders in innovation. As the WNBA moves away from giant front-of-jersey sponsorships that take up the entire torso, uniforms across the league have gotten much better. The NWSL isn’t quite there yet, but there’s still plenty of time to course correct.For the purposes of this conversation, though, we’re focusing on the gems. There has been no shortage of new uniforms since the year 2000, and certainly no shortage of discourse about them either. We tried to whittle them down to the very best of the millennium, with some ground rules. Even if the team wore them into the 21st century, any jersey that was introduced pre-2000 is disqualified. The same is true for throwbacks that got revitalized, unless they got a modern twist. For example, the Seahawks’ old school joints that got dusted off for the 2023 season are a true copy and paste of the ones they wore in the ’70s. For that reason, they are ineligible. The same thing is true of the Arizona Coyotes bringing back their iconic Kachina logo, a.k.a the Peyote Coyote.In order to make this list, the jersey has to be truly new, so something like the Mets’ black tops that debuted in the late-’90s, stayed in rotation for many years, went dormant, and then came back are not included here either. What we do have is 31 stunners, spanning the entire century thus far and covering every color of the rainbow. We know you won’t agree with all of them, or will feel adamantly that others should be included, but hopefully there’s something about all of these uniforms that you can appreciate.NBADenver Nuggets Away Uniform (2003-2015)Garrett Ellwood/Getty ImagesA certified hood classic, these jerseys coincided with the team’s major rebrand in 2003, the year Carmelo Anthony arrived. This jersey looked absolutely sweet on the court and arguably even better on the streets. No nightclub or music video in the early 2000s was safe from an extra in a powder blue Melo joint.Utah Jazz City Edition Uniform (2017-2018)Sam Forencich/Getty ImagesOne of the more ambitious jerseys in league history, the Jazz executed this to perfection. The color scheme was meant to honor the red rocks and canyon hues of Utah's desert landscape, and the results did not disappoint.Miami Heat City Edition Uniform (2018-2019)Issac Baldizon/Getty ImagesA year after the Jazz broke out the best City Editions the league had ever seen, the Heat came along in 2018 and upstaged them. The point of the City Edition uniforms is to honor the community where the team plays, and it's hard to imagine anything more evocative of a night out in Miami than these bad boys.Charlotte Hornets Icon Edition Uniform (2020-Present)Brock Williams-Smith/Getty ImagesThis is a case of a team just having a beautiful colors to work with, but when Charlotte reclaimed the Hornets name in 2014 after an ill-fated stint as the Bobcats, they curiously went without the pinstripes that made their jerseys a ’90s staple. It wasn’t until 2020 that the stripes came back, and while many were disappointed to see them phase out the color purple, the simple teal and white really sings.Memphis Grizzlies Statement Uniform (2021-2022)Justin Ford/Getty ImagesThe Grizzlies rolled out the first installment of this uniform in 2018, but it didn't have the white Air Jordan logos on the shoulder and hip, which are the type of ultra-fine detail that can take a kit from good to great.Brooklyn Nets City Edition Uniform (2021-2022)Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty ImagesA throwback classic with a touch of modernity, these are some of the Nets' best work in recent years. The club's current black-and-white aesthetic felt cool and sleek when it first moved to Brooklyn in 2012, but it's begun to look drab over the decade and chan
All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Believe it or not, we are now 25 years into the new millennium. In hindsight, distant eras like Y2K seem very quaint, while the pandemic will probably always feel like yesterday. Sports uniforms, for their part, have undergone quite the journey over the last quarter century, as pretty much every pro franchise has taken at least one wild (and sometimes misguided) swing.
In the NBA, every team seemingly has ten jerseys now. MLB has introduced the lightning rod City Connect uniforms, with some of them proving better than the team’s main digs, and others turning heads for all the wrong reasons. The NFL remains fairly beholden to tradition, and with a few rare exceptions, most clubs have kept things fairly safe. The same is (mostly) true for the NHL, while soccer teams around the globe continue to be the leaders in innovation. As the WNBA moves away from giant front-of-jersey sponsorships that take up the entire torso, uniforms across the league have gotten much better. The NWSL isn’t quite there yet, but there’s still plenty of time to course correct.
For the purposes of this conversation, though, we’re focusing on the gems. There has been no shortage of new uniforms since the year 2000, and certainly no shortage of discourse about them either. We tried to whittle them down to the very best of the millennium, with some ground rules. Even if the team wore them into the 21st century, any jersey that was introduced pre-2000 is disqualified. The same is true for throwbacks that got revitalized, unless they got a modern twist. For example, the Seahawks’ old school joints that got dusted off for the 2023 season are a true copy and paste of the ones they wore in the ’70s. For that reason, they are ineligible. The same thing is true of the Arizona Coyotes bringing back their iconic Kachina logo, a.k.a the Peyote Coyote.
In order to make this list, the jersey has to be truly new, so something like the Mets’ black tops that debuted in the late-’90s, stayed in rotation for many years, went dormant, and then came back are not included here either. What we do have is 31 stunners, spanning the entire century thus far and covering every color of the rainbow. We know you won’t agree with all of them, or will feel adamantly that others should be included, but hopefully there’s something about all of these uniforms that you can appreciate.
NBA
A certified hood classic, these jerseys coincided with the team’s major rebrand in 2003, the year Carmelo Anthony arrived. This jersey looked absolutely sweet on the court and arguably even better on the streets. No nightclub or music video in the early 2000s was safe from an extra in a powder blue Melo joint.
One of the more ambitious jerseys in league history, the Jazz executed this to perfection. The color scheme was meant to honor the red rocks and canyon hues of Utah's desert landscape, and the results did not disappoint.
A year after the Jazz broke out the best City Editions the league had ever seen, the Heat came along in 2018 and upstaged them. The point of the City Edition uniforms is to honor the community where the team plays, and it's hard to imagine anything more evocative of a night out in Miami than these bad boys.
This is a case of a team just having a beautiful colors to work with, but when Charlotte reclaimed the Hornets name in 2014 after an ill-fated stint as the Bobcats, they curiously went without the pinstripes that made their jerseys a ’90s staple. It wasn’t until 2020 that the stripes came back, and while many were disappointed to see them phase out the color purple, the simple teal and white really sings.
The Grizzlies rolled out the first installment of this uniform in 2018, but it didn't have the white Air Jordan logos on the shoulder and hip, which are the type of ultra-fine detail that can take a kit from good to great.
A throwback classic with a touch of modernity, these are some of the Nets' best work in recent years. The club's current black-and-white aesthetic felt cool and sleek when it first moved to Brooklyn in 2012, but it's begun to look drab over the decade and change since. Slowly mixing in old-school red and blue points to a potential migration away from that color scheme, and if the team's next permanent uniforms look anything like these, the Nets will be in good shape. This City Edition set even came with its own alternate court, which really heightened the overall visual experience.
NFL
Many will say the Eagles don't need black jerseys, but they're wrong. The only misstep here is when the team pairs them with green pants. When worn with the white pants, as Terrell Owens demonstrates above, the whole look really pops.
The Ravens were already one of the NFL's most intimidating teams of the early 2000s, and the all-black look only added to that aura. Nothing was scarier than seeing Ed Reed, Ray Lewis, and Terrell Suggs flying around in these.
Obviously, the Chargers have been synonymous with powder blue for generations. But they revamped their uniforms a bit in 2020, adding numbers to the helmets (always a great aesthetic choice), changing up the fonts, and making the first true classic of the decade. The beauty of these is that they can be worn with yellow or white pants and the overall look doesn't take a hit (though we think they work best with the yellows).
MLB
Some will say these are violently early-2000s—and they're right—but that doesn't mean they aren't cool as hell. Enough time has passed that we're viewing these through the nostalgia lens, and they look pretty great from where we're standing. Mountainous trim on the sleeves, purple pinstripes on gray pants, and black tops in the Arizona heat don't seem like great ideas on paper. But whenever the D-backs took the field in these, they looked incredibly sharp. (The back of the jerseys are also spectacular.)
The Phils had a version of these in the ’40s, but modernized them for the 21st century by adding names to the back. Simply put, these are gorgeous—and frankly should probably become the team’s primary uniform. (Technically, the version of this uniform seen above got a slight remix in 2019, when the team swtiched to a slightly darker shade of red for the script “Phillies” lettering.)
The A’s have had yellow jerseys in the past, but that was back in baseball's pullover era, when they didn't have buttons. (An even more audacious version from the late ’60s had buttons but no sleeves, and it was paired with a green undershirt and equally yellow pants.) This contemporary reimagining, featuring expert use of green piping down the middle, gave the A’s one of the best looks in the league.
St. Louis Cardinals Home Saturday Uniform (2013-Present)
Always cool when a team gets a day-specific uniform. In 2013, the Cardinals introduced this gorgeous cream jersey—a slight departure from the Redbirds' standard home whites—for Saturday home games only, which replaced the “Cardinals” wordmark with a “St. Louis” script across the chest. It is no coincidence that they won the National League pennant that year.
One of the few City Connects worth keeping around, the Marlins absolutely nailed this uniform, creating something that feels unique and distinct without being gimmicky.
NHL
Apart from the gorgeous marriage of forest green and cream, these jerseys work so well in part because they don't rely on Minnesota's primary logo, which is an instant time capsule to the early 2000s. Putting “Minnesota” in script brings a really nice charm to the sweater, and the verdant green is just as evocative of the state's abundant nature as the logo (moved to the thigh on this uniform) tries to be.
All the Sharks did here was take their previous teal jerseys and remove the numbers on the collarbone, which made the sweater less busy. San Jose has the benefit of a unique color palette and sick logo, but they had some misses in the early part of the century that did not age well. These guys are the pinnacle of the team's aesthetic history.
In the brief history of the Seattle Kraken, every uniform they've introduced has been flames. But this particular jersey, cooked up for the city's first-ever Winter Classic, is the best one yet. They're somehow both retro and modern at once, like they could be from 2024 or 1924. That's one of the hardest feats to pull off—and the Kraken did so admirably.
Words like “aura” and “iconic” have been run into the ground, almost to the point of losing their meaning altogether. But these kits really were iconic, and they did in fact capture the aura of Manchester United during the Wayne Rooney era. Red shirt, white shorts, black socks. Nothing flashy, but a great getup that was instantly recognizable all around the world.
Not to be outdone, United's neighbors swung back with a great kit of their own a couple years later. This was the third year of the Etihad sponsorship, and while it isn't a huge deviation from other City kits of the past, this one added a raised white collar that really takes it to another level. Also, this was when Umbro was still making City's jerseys, and it's hard to get more British than that. Added points for the striped socks.
When these debuted, they literally broke sales records at Nike. There's not much else that needs to be said, honestly.
The cruel irony of these stellar kits is that France opted not to wear them in the World Cup final, instead donning navy shorts like they did when they won the tournament in 2018. That bit of superstition didn't work out. The question of whether or not Les Bleus would have repeated had they worn the red, white, and blue look is now one of the great hypotheticals in sports jersey history. Either way, the visual balance of this uniform—the way that the gold accents, bright white shorts, and fire-engine red socks offset the matte navy shirt—is something every country should be looking to replicate.
Our pick for the best jerseys of the 2023 World Cup, these are just a triumph of design. Jamaica's kits were concocted by the great Grace Wales Bonner, and as expected, they turned out beautifully. The retro stripes, the shade of green used for the shorts—it all works in perfect harmony.
If you haven't figured it out by now, we love pinstripes and we love powder blue. In this case, we also love the logo that the Sounders unveiled when they dropped these jerseys. It's a cartoon whale! And what's this? He plays soccer? Delightful. The orca is a tribute to the team's original iconography from their origins as a North American Soccer League club in 1974, and the kit they designed for the 50th anniversary is an absolute scorcher.
WNBA
These are HARD. Again, powder blue makes an appearance here, but it's the black that really drives this look. We don't have nearly as many pinstripe basketball jerseys as we should, and if other teams are thinking about implementing them, these should be their measuring stick. If you can't make one in the same neighborhood as the Chicago Sky's, don't even try.
Like the Sky's black-and-blue pinstripes, these are the Sparks' Explorer jerseys, which were part of an all-around fantastic collaboration between the WNBA and Nike in 2021. Purple and gold with white lettering is guaranteed to pop, and the palm tree sprouting out of the L is a stroke of genius. Importantly, both these and Chicago's uniforms did a great job of making sure the front-of-jersey sponsorship didn't dominate the entire look.
College Basketball
Polarizing, no doubt, but it's important to take risks in life. Putting trim down the side of a basketball jersey was something that had really fallen out of fashion until Marquette University (who had style god Jimmy Butler on the squad from 2008-2011!) was brave enough to try it.
College Football
A very clean uniform that mixes modernity (the yassified bronco on one side of the helmet) with a classic (the other side of the helmet has the players' jersey number, which we're a sucker for) in a way that doesn't feel forced. College football's longtime plucky underdog also announced its glow up with these uniforms, which are a major upgrade from the ones they wore during their coming out party.
Just outstanding work all around. These were an homage to the old days of UH football, when the team still had uniforms that heavily featured the rainbow, only with numbers on the shoulder. Revamping the Roy G. Biv look was a no-brainer, even if Hawaii lost this game 38-0 to Ohio State.
The Ducks wore these “green apple” unis for their Rose Bowl appearance on New Year's Day 2015 and promptly beat the brakes off Florida State. The Oregon football program has famously tried a bunch of different helmet, jersey, and pants combos, but these ones made it clear that finding a color that works and going monochrome remains a sure path to sartorial excellence.
Ole Miss Rebels powder blues (2020-Present)
Hoo boy. It's hard to get much better than this. It's possible that our powder blue bias is showing, but who cares when it looks this damn good?
College Baseball
A simple (dare we say perfect?) baseball uniform. Introduced in 2018, the Razorbacks proved that sometimes, the best move when designing a jersey is to not overthink things.
