Yellow of Yesteryear: Our vibrant history with the yellow kit

A colour with a vibrant history has returned to the Spurs palette following the launch of our 2025/26 Nike Third Kit on Tuesday.

The new strip features a fusion of yellow with blue detailing to pay homage to some of the Club’s most famous change kits, more on this later, and channel the nostalgic look of the legendary Nike Total 90 era.

Complete with a heritage club crest and retro cuff and collar design, it's electrifying in appearance and in keeping with a long-standing tradition that is woven into the very fabric of our proud history.

Our connection with yellow can be loosely traced back to 1958, a little-known 'amber' Rayon kit worn five times in floodlit games over two seasons, but really rose to prominence in the 1970s and has since become a recurring theme throughout the modern era.

Here we chart our yellow kits of yesteryear (excluding goalkeeper kits)...

Born out of a ban

When the Football League banned teams from wearing navy shirts due to the clash with the match officials on black and white televisions especially, Spurs introduced its first yellow away jersey in the 1969/70 season and wore it for the league opener away to Leeds United.

At the time, this first iteration featured white trim and white numbers which proved extremely hard to make out on the pitch. Only worn for two seasons, the trim was then dropped and we switched to an all-yellow Umbro style with the club crest embroidered in navy - with royal blue shorts and numbers - for the following four campaigns.

Having worn yellow socks to accompany our Lilywhite shirts and navy shorts in the 1971 League Cup success over Aston Villa, the 1974 UEFA Cup final second leg was our maiden outing in a cup final in a yellow strip, although we lost 2-0 to Feyenoord in Rotterdam (4-2 on aggregate).

Stylish second kits

For the start of the 1975/76 season, a new Umbro design was chosen and the fashionable navy winged button-up collar on the yellow away shirt was a popular design used a number of times over its two-year cycle.

In the 1970s, yellow was being widely adopted as an away kit colour due in part by Brazil's inspiring 1970 World Cup success in Mexico. In yellow the season before as mentioned above, this period showed we were very much in vogue with trends at the time and out of it came an affinity with this vibrant colour.

The following campaign saw us switch manufacturer from Umbro to Admiral and this highly-distinctive kit was worn for the remainder of the decade - although tweaked slightly in 1979/80. Sporting a large winged navy collar and an Admiral-branded v-neck, as well as navy cuffs, the shirt was famously worn in the promotion-clinching 0-0 draw at Southampton to see us return to Division One on the final day of the 1977/78 league season. A somewhat watershed moment in our history...

Next term saw Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa unveiled at White Hart Lane as well as the emergence of home-grown Glenn Hoddle and with it, akin to the Admiral home jersey of that ilk, this design holds an endearing quality for our supporters.

Eighties goes electric

Kicking off a memorable decade in our history, a move to kit maker Le Coq Sportif started with the white home and yellow away tradition and the iconic silky, shiny appearance delivered some belters throughout a golden era for the Club.

Beginning with the 1980-82 edition, this striking all-yellow design was worn on 21 occasions across its initial two-season lifespan plus, most notably, in the two FA Cup final matches as we retained the trophy with victory over two legs against Queens Park Rangers in 1982.

Did you know? This kit was twice revived as an emergency third kit in 1983/84 - with the addition of then sponsor Holsten - memorably for the 1984 UEFA Cup semi-final first leg at Hajduk Split on our way to winning the competition.

Celebrating our 100th birthday in 1982, Le Coq Sportif produced three pioneering shirts that remain some of our most celebrated of all time. Our famous cockerel and ball crest featured 'CENTENARY YEAR' embroidered in an arc above, the years '1882' and '1982' either side and 'TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR' in a scroll beneath.

The yellow third shirt, displaying the iconic shadow stripe effect used across all three shirts, was worn only once. A friendly away to Bristol Rovers in April, 1983, which also marked the home side's own centenary.

The mid-1980s saw us switch to Hummel and, after a five-year absence, the Danish sportswear company reintroduced yellow with the 1988-91 away kit. The jersey featured the heritage club crest with our Latin motto in a scroll, a wraparound v-neck and cuffs with a navy trim, as well as a bold double chevron pattern on the sleeves and 'Hummel' marked into the fabric.

Nineties and naughty kits

Picking up in the 1990s where we left off the decade before with the 1991 FA Cup success, our final year with Hummel, Umbro were back, and back with a bang.

Used as an away or third shirt over four seasons, this yellow number has many memorable moments associated with it - Gary Lineker scoring an all-time great team goal against Porto at White Hart Lane or Ronnie Rosenthal's four goals at Southampton in the FA Cup - and was our first change strip in the Premier League era following the inaugural season in 1992/93.

When Umbro's four-year contract came to end, we moved to American kit supplier Pony and with it came a front-of-shirt sponsor change to computer company Hewlett-Packard in 1995.

In line with a classic change kit tradition, this yellow third jersey - initially produced as an away cup shirt - has proven to be one of the most popular designs amongst its peers. Worn in cup competitions in 1995/96, it then featured prominently as the away shirt the following season and reverted back to a third strip in 1997/98 but was never worn that term. That didn't stop David Ginola number 14 shirts from appearing in the original Premiership font though.

Ending that era with 1999 League Cup success, the turn of the millennium saw us switch to global giants adidas - returning to Holsten as the main sponsor - who combined our traditional yellow and navy away colours for the 1999/2000 season.

This was not the only one of its kind. As, two years later, one of our more intriguing kits in the modern era was worn as a one-off for the 2002 League Cup final defeat at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

Up against Blackburn Rovers, we lost the coin toss to decide the choice of kit colours prior to the contest and our opponents selected their white-and-blue-halved home jersey. Clashing with both our home and away kits, adidas had to produce an emergency strip - taking inspiration from its predecessor - with approximately 60 of these yellow shirts made which sported the 'Worthington cup final' sleeve badge.

Seven more

The four years of Kappa brought three yellow change kits. The Italian brand, coupled with Thomson holidays as the sponsor, embraced our tradition with clean and simple kits for each of its designs between 2002-06 to create instant classics in the archive.

In 2006/07, Puma were announced as our brand-new kit manufacturer. Launched simultaneously alongside all four kits for our 125th anniversary the following season - including a one-off special blue-and-white-halved shirt - the yellow third kit carried the '125 Years' under the club crest and was worn on five occasions in a trophy-winning campaign with the 2008 League Cup. Puma's final edition came in 2009/10 with a popular Puma King tribute, featuring a diagonal pattern and the two stripes down the side.

Switching to Under Armour in 2012/13, the American apparel brand yearned for yellow and ended the four-year absence by reintroducing the colour for their third kit in 2014/15. This kit was worn more frequently than the designated black away shirt, totalling nine appearances - against Stoke City, Southampton, Newcastle United, West Bromwich Albion, Sheffield United, Sunderland and Leicester City domestically; and Besiktas and Partizan Belgrade in Europe.

The longest wait for a yellow kit in the modern era ended with Nike's 2020/21 third kit for European competition. The modern interpretation of our classic away colour hearkened back to the 1980s and centralised our Club crest and the Nike swoosh.

The brand-new 2025/26 edition, worn by our Women's First Team during their 3-1 victory over Southampton during pre-season on Sunday, is available in-store and online here.