The Los Angeles Rams unveiled a uniform and brand refresh on Thursday morning, announcing changes to their logo, their jerseys, and their broader visual identity for the 2026 NFL season.
For casual observers, the update is a modernisation. For anyone who has been paying attention to Rams fan sentiment since May 2020, it is something more specific than that.
It represents a course correction, executed six years after the original mistakes were made.
The headline changes are the ones fans have been asking for since the day the current look debuted. The gradient is gone from the logo.
The gradient is gone from the jersey numbers. The Bone uniform has been officially retired. These were the three most consistent criticisms of the 2020 rebrand, and all three of them have now been addressed.
What Changes With The New Uniforms?
Starting with the logo. The LA monogram that serves as the franchise’s primary mark has been simplified.
The gradient coloring, a yellow-to-white fade that was layered into the logo and that many fans described as looking cheap or generic, has been replaced with a solid finish.
The Rams said the change was directly influenced by fan and partner feedback. The Ram head logo has also been enhanced, described by the team as appearing bolder and tougher, with a fiercer expression. The horn has a sharper, more defined point.
On the jerseys, the gradient numbers are gone. When the 2020 uniforms debuted, the royal blue jerseys featured numbers that faded from yellow at the top to white at the bottom.
The reaction was immediate and brutal, one critic wrote that the numbers looked like “the writing on an ice cream cake.”
That particular design choice became something of a symbol for everything fans felt was wrong with the rebrand. Visually busy, trying too hard, prioritizing novelty over clarity. Six years later, the numbers are now clean and solid.
The chest tag, the patch near the chest that displayed the team name and that drew widespread criticism for looking like something from a costume rather than a professional uniform, has also been removed.
The Bone uniform, which the team officially called its road alternate when it debuted in 2020, is gone from the rotation entirely.
The off-white color drew mockery from its first appearance and the team had already been phasing it out over recent seasons.
It was largely replaced by the modern throwback set during the Super Bowl 2021 season, notably, when the Rams won Super Bowl LVI over the Cincinnati Bengals, they were wearing the throwback look, not the bone.
The official retirement formalises what the scheduling had already been saying for years.
The helmet treatment remains unchanged, the iconic horn design stays exactly as it is, but new 3D bumper logos have been added. The full modern horn sleeve, which was introduced on the Midnight Rivalry uniform last season, has now been brought over to both primary jerseys.
A new neck tag features the Sol monogram on Royal backing draped over the collar, described by the team as highlighting the connection to the city.
On pants, a white primary pant option has been added alongside the existing Royal and Sol options, giving the team more uniform combinations on game day.
What Will The Uniform Rotation Look Like Going Forward?
The system going forward. Two primary uniform sets, Royal and White, anchored by the refreshed jerseys.
The Midnight Rivalry uniform, introduced last season to strong reception, stays in the rotation. The Bone is gone.
Two additional alternate uniforms described as blending tradition and modernity will be unveiled later this summer. The team has not revealed details on those yet.
CMO Kathryn Kai-ling Frederick: “As we look ahead to the next decade of Rams football in LA, this refresh is about sharpening what already defines us.
It’s a modern refinement, elevating our identity with clarity and purpose while carrying our history forward, and matching the toughness, precision and competitiveness of our team.”
Why The 2020 Rebrand Was Such A Problem
To understand why this refresh matters as much as it does to a significant portion of the fanbase, you need to go back to May 13, 2020.
That was the day the Rams unveiled what was supposed to be a defining visual identity for the team’s second era in Los Angeles, six years after they announced their return from St. Louis.
The rebrand was comprehensive, new logos, new colors (Royal and Sol replacing Navy and Gold), new uniform system, and the reaction was overwhelmingly negative.
The criticisms came from every direction. The gradient on the logo and jersey numbers looked cluttered and dated to fans who wanted something clean.
The Bone uniform, an off-white jersey and pant combination that the team seemed to expect fans to embrace as modern and distinctive, was widely described as ugly, confusing, or both.
The chest tag patches were mocked as looking like something you’d find on a Halloween costume.
Arian Foster tweeted a response not safe to reproduce here. The general consensus was that the Rams had taken a rebrand opportunity and produced something that looked more like a minor league concept sheet than the uniform of a Super Bowl-caliber franchise.
The team didn’t immediately change anything, but they did start quietly walking things back through scheduling.
The Bone uniform appeared less and less frequently. The modern throwback, a cleaner look that connected more directly to the franchise’s visual history, was elevated.
When the Rams won the Super Bowl in February 2022, capping one of the most celebrated seasons in recent franchise history and doing it at home in their own stadium, they did it in the throwback look. That detail was not lost on anyone watching.
What the 2026 refresh acknowledges, in the most practical terms possible, is that the original design had problems. The gradient was a mistake.
The chest tag was a mistake. The Bone was a mistake. The team has said the logo changes were “influenced by fan and partner feedback,” which is the corporate way of saying, People told us for six years and we eventually listened.
Sports Illustrated described the changes as “more corrective than new,” which is probably the most accurate characterisation available.
Why Change Now?
The timing is not accidental. The Rams announced the refresh on April 16, 2026, the Thursday of NFL Draft week, with the team hosting a Draft experience block party at Hollywood Park in Inglewood adjacent to SoFi Stadium.
The new uniforms are available for purchase immediately at the Zillow Draft House retail pop-up at the Hollywood Park event through April 25, at RamsFanShop.com, and at The Equipment Room at SoFi Stadium starting April 26.
Beyond the commercial timing, there is a broader context. SoFi Stadium is about to enter a period of unprecedented global visibility, the venue is set to host a historic stretch of major international sporting events over the coming years, and the Rams are conscious of the platform that creates.
A refreshed visual identity that the fan base actually likes is more valuable in that context than one they have been tolerating.
The Rams also framed the change explicitly as a second-decade marker, the team returned to Los Angeles in 2016, meaning 2026 represents roughly the beginning of the third decade of the current LA era.
The description is “next evolution of the team’s visual identity” rather than a new rebrand from scratch, which is accurate to what was actually delivered: this is not a new look, it is the existing look fixed.
TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles worked with the team on a film celebrating the cultural impact of Fridays in LA communities, the creative was described as working to reflect the real diversity of LA’s culture rather than a conventional play on nostalgia.
What Else Is Coming?
The two new alternate uniforms arriving this summer are the genuinely unknown quantity in this announcement.
The team has described them as blending tradition and modernity, which is deliberately vague.
Given the pattern of this refresh, which has consistently moved toward cleaner, more heritage-influenced design, the most likely direction is something that leans into the franchise’s historical looks, potentially drawing on the royal and gold identity from the St. Louis or pre-move LA eras.
That is speculation. The official reveal will come later in the offseason.
What is not speculation is the reaction to what has been shown so far. The removal of the gradient, the retirement of the Bone, the cleaner logo, these are things fans have been requesting consistently and loudly for the better part of six years.
The Rams have delivered on all three. Whether the two new alternates complete the picture is a question for summer.
For now, the most visible problems with the 2020 look have been fixed, and fans who have been waiting for exactly this appear to know it.
