Paris Saint-Germain will step onto the pitch in Budapest wearing its familiar navy home shirt — this time stamped with an embroidered FIFA gold shield above the sponsor — for the Champions League final against Arsenal today.
The gold badge is not a fashion flourish. It is the official mark awarded to PSG as winners of the 2025 Intercontinental Cup, a tournament revived by FIFA in 2024, and the crest will sit on the chest of the PSG jersey during the match.
That detail matters because the gold shield is rare: PSG becomes only the second club to wear FIFA’s gold crest, joining Real Madrid. The mark recognizes PSG’s December win over Flamengo in Al Rayyan, Qatar, a final that finished 1-1 after extra time and was decided on penalties.
Practically, the badge is an allowed decorative element under the competition’s equipment rules; only official FIFA event badges are permitted on shirts for major finals and this one is being worn in recognition of PSG’s Intercontinental Cup title. On the field in Budapest, the gold shield will be visible just above the sponsor name on PSG’s navy shirt with its customary red and white detailing.
The kit choices in Budapest also resolve a potential clash that drew attention in the build-up. Arsenal, listed as the 'away' team after being placed on the blue path in the February knockout draw, will not change its colours: the Gunners will wear this season’s red home kit — not the new adidas home kit released earlier in the month, and not a different strip. That means the short-lived risk that Arsenal might need a changed shirt because PSG’s kit contains red has been averted.
The decision recalls a similar moment in European final history: Arsenal had to switch to a yellow changed strip in the 2005–06 Champions League final in Paris because of a clash with Barcelona. This time, the combination of PSG’s navy base and Arsenal’s chosen red will stand without forcing either side to adopt an alternate strip.
For fans, the gold shield is both a symbol and a talking point. It reinforces PSG’s status as the Intercontinental Cup winners — the tournament that crowns the champions among continental winners on FIFA’s global stage — and it makes the club’s match shirt in Budapest a limited, ceremonial variant rather than a wholesale change of identity.
One small pop-cultural subplot remains unresolved: an old video that resurfaced on social media shows Achraf Hakimi signing a PSG jersey for Rihanna directly over the number 2. Whether that signed shirt will ever be worn or publicly displayed is unanswered, a human aside to the formal symbolism now embroidered on the team’s match shirts.
The immediate next event is the match itself: kickoff in Budapest will show the navy PSG shirts carrying the FIFA gold shield and Arsenal in red. After that, the crest’s rarity and the match’s outcome will determine whether the gold badge becomes a lasting emblem of a trophy season or a single, celebrated footnote in the club’s history.
