England X Palestine Football Shirts Drop November 28th 2025

Words: Miles Holder

From Katharine Hamnett’s bold anti-nuclear T-shirts in the 1980s to Vivienne Westwood’s environmental advocacy, fashion has consistently provided a platform for both protest and solidarity. The newly released England X Palestine football shirt, created by political street-art collective PatternUP in collaboration with Irish artist Spicebag, filmmaker Jake Hanrahan, and Pakistani artist Alina Akbar, joins this lineage with deliberate clarity.

At a time when English symbols…particularly the St George’s flag left hanging in the rain until it droops in a permanent, weather-worn slump across the balcony opposite my local Tesco, have been entangled in exclusionary politics, the collaborators behind this project propose an alternative. Their design fuses the familiar structure of classic England football kits with Palestinian motifs, including Arabic script and an embroidered outline of Palestine. The result is a shirt that plays with the core of what Englishness signifies today and whether national identity can be reclaimed as a vehicle for solidarity rather than division.

During the civil rights era, the Black Panthers strategically used dress black berets, leather jackets, and natural hair as a form of collective assertion. Later, ACT UP’s graphic T-shirts and badges contributed to the visibility of AIDS activism through sharp, uncompromising visuals. In both cases, clothing conveyed resistance and community alignment more immediately than text or policy ever could. The England X Palestine shirt works within this tradition, using symbolism to extend visibility to those experiencing oppression and displacement.

Historically, fashion aligned with Palestinian solidarity has often centred on the keffiyeh a garment that became globally recognisable during the late twentieth century as a visual shorthand for resistance. However, the keffiyeh’s widespread commodification has sometimes obscured its political meaning. By using a football shirt instead, an object deeply linked to British cultural identity, PatternUP and collaborators reposition Palestinian solidarity within a context instantly understood by English audiences.

Importantly, the project is tied to material action. One hundred per cent of profits from the sales will be donated to Dignity4Palestine, a humanitarian group supplying food, water, and medical equipment to civilians in Gaza. The organisation is run by Dr Mussallam Abukhalil of Nasser Hospital and supported almost entirely by overseas donations.

While it’s more than just a shirt, we didn’t want to end the article without mentioning how beautifully designed the shirt is as a stand alone football shirt. They’ve found the perfect way to fuse both cultural signifiers and create a jersey that no matter how hard you find it to say “genocides are objectively bad”, you can’t deny the shirt is sick…what a sentence.

Follow PatternUP on Instagram for more infomation on the 28th November drop

Check out our interview with the now Palestinian content creator Medo Halimy