Puma Kicks Gen AI Into Gear, Letting Fans Design Manchester City’s 2026 Kit

Fans can then share their designs on Instagram, Instagram Stories, or X.

The initiative taps into the passion of Manchester City fans, who already share their own jersey designs online.

“If you go on Instagram and look up Man City kits, you’ll find hundreds, if not 1,000s of illustrators and designers that create their own kits,” said Dashkov. “Everybody always has an opinion on these kits.”

For fans, designing a jersey offers an accessible, exciting way to bring their ideas to life with the help of AI. “AI gives them a chance to do that,” Dashkov added.

Puma spent over a year developing the AI jersey design project with FTR Studio and Deep Objects, using a Stable Diffusion base model.

“We’re exploring how to expand this [concept] but need to see the learnings of the first one before making concrete plans,” Dashkov said, adding that additional football teams or other parts of their business could get similar AI-driven experiences, but wouldn’t share more.

AI guardrails take the field 

To ensure responsible use, Puma has layered multiple levels of content moderation for the AI tool.

“There’s an industry-standard list of things you can’t prompt—certain topics, like profanity terms or content that’s restricted even on platforms like Midjourney,” said Dashkov. The company also filters out competitor IP and brands it doesn’t own.

An AI program reviews all generated images for safety, and any flagged content, such as humanoid figures like robots or aliens, is automatically replaced. Finally, all competition submissions go through human moderation before approval.

However, like many AI models prone to hallucinations, early testing revealed some quirks—one prompt requesting a “repeating image of Batman, of Batman and Superman” resulted in a jersey featuring those characters, highlighting the potential for IP-related issues.

Following the voting process, a shortlist of top entries will be reviewed by an expert panel, who will ensure the designs comply with FIFA regulations. The final 10 will be selected, and fans will vote again on the winner, who will become Manchester City’s official third kit for 2026.

Participants start with 10 AI generations (prompts) and can submit up to three designs. Voting daily—20 votes per day—unlocks more generations and submissions.