IPL Jerseys: Team Colours and Historic Designs

Every IPL franchise has a colour it is known by, and most of them have changed more than fans remember. Kolkata Knight Riders started in black, Rajasthan Royals spent eleven seasons in blue, Mumbai Indians had no gold until 2010, and Punjab Kings had no gold until 2021. This is a cross-team guide to the colours and the designs that defined them, with the dates checked, so you can date a shirt from its colours and know which editions were actually worn. For buying a particular team's shirt, each team has its own guide linked below.

The Colours by Team

The Designs Worth Knowing

• KKR's purple switch, 2010. The clearest colour change in the league's history, from two seasons of black and gold to the purple the club has worn since, reported at the time as a fresh start rather than for any superstition.
• The Royals' pink, 2019. A colour change with a stated reason: Jaipur the Pink City, Jodhpur's sandstone, Udaipur's marble, and the fans' response to a one-off pink cancer-awareness shirt in 2018.
• RCB's green match. One fixture a season in green since 2011 for environmental awareness, which is the single most searched question about any IPL kit.
• CSK's camouflage, 2021. The first redesign in thirteen seasons, with shoulders in camouflage as a tribute to the armed forces, moved to the front of the shirt in 2026.
• MI's designer era. Shantanu and Nikhil's five-elements shirt in 2021 and camouflage in 2022, Monisha Jaising's art deco M-grid in 2024.
• The Capitals' Metro map, 2024. Puma's first Delhi kit, with the city's rail map woven into the fabric.
• The one-match editions. RCB green, the Royals' Pink Promise, Delhi's rainbow kit in 2022 and 2023, and RCB's sky-blue PPE tribute in 2021. These are the shirts most often sold as something they are not.

Dating a Shirt by Its Colours

Colour alone dates most shirts to within a few seasons: black KKR is 2008 to 2009 or the 2025 retro; blue Royals is pre-2019; gold-free Mumbai is 2008 to 2009; gold-trimmed Punjab is 2021 to 2025; an RCB shirt with the old lion crest is pre-2024. Stars and sponsors narrow it further, and each team guide lists them. What colours do not tell you is whether a shirt is genuine, which is a question of the seller and the labels covered in our guide to authentic cricket shirts.

What Colours Do Not Do

A good deal of writing about IPL kits claims that colours intimidate opponents, lift performance or drive sales. None of it is sourced and we have stopped repeating it. Teams choose colours for ownership, city and sponsorship reasons, change them when owners or fortunes change, and win or lose in them according to the cricket. The shirts are worth collecting for what they record, not for what they are supposed to do.

Buying

If you want a particular team, start with that team's guide above and the choose your own collection, which is the live list of what we hold. If you want an IPL shirt and do not mind which, the IPL mystery box at £39.88 is the cheapest route. The cricket shirts buying guide covers tiers, sizing and where UK fans can buy across every league.

FAQs: IPL Team Colours

Which IPL team wears purple? Kolkata Knight Riders, since 2010. Their first two seasons were black and gold.

Which IPL team wears pink? Rajasthan Royals, since 2019, after eleven seasons in blue.

Why does RCB wear green sometimes? One match a season since 2011 for environmental awareness. The regular kit is red and black.

Which IPL team has changed its colours most? Punjab Kings, whose red has been trimmed with white, silver, blue, gold and blue again across its history.

Which teams have never changed colour? Chennai Super Kings in yellow since 2008 and Sunrisers Hyderabad in orange since 2013.