The Premier League has had three full logo identities, launched in 1992, 2007 and 2016, and Nomad Studio refined the last of them in 2023. A lion sits at the centre of every version.
The 20 club crests have design histories of their own. Most lean on animals, local history, industry or mythology (Sports Illustrated, 2026).
One mistake shows up in a lot of explainers: that the 2016 redesign dropped the lion. It removed the football and the lion's body but kept the lion's head (Dezeen, 2016).
How many official Premier League logos have there been?
Three full identities, launched in 1992, 2007 and 2016. The 2023 refinement by Nomad Studio adds a fourth version but not a fourth identity. Design Week called the 2016 mark the league's third identity in 24 years.
For what each version actually contained, Dezeen's 2016 coverage and Design Week's 2023 report are the clearest records.
| Version | Title sponsor | What the logo shows |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | None in 1992/93, then Carling | Lion, introduced at the league's founding |
| 2007 | Barclays | Lion body and football inside a crest-shaped outline, with Barclays branding |
| 2016 | None | Lion head only. Football, lion body and sponsor removed |
| 2023 | None | Lion head kept. Two earlier versions merged into one master asset |
Higher counts usually come from counting other things. FourFourTwo's badge timeline logs sleeve patch changes in 1993, 2003, 2007, 2016 and 2023, but that's five dates for a patch, not for the logo.
Sponsor wording muddies it too. Carling, Barclaycard and Barclays each appeared in the league's name, yet Design Week's count of three identities doesn't treat those wording changes as new logos. And the 2023 update gets inflated sometimes. Design Week framed it as a run of small updates, not a new identity.
Nomad refined the 2016 visual identity rather than replacing it, so the lion head drawn in 2016 is still the base of today's mark.
Count the logo and skip the patch, and the answer stays at three identities and one update.
Why did the Premier League remove the sponsor from its logo?
Clubs voted at the league's AGM on 4 June 2015 to drop the title sponsor category once Barclays' deal ended with the 2015/16 season (Marketing Week, 2015). From 2016/17 the competition is simply the Premier League, so the logo carries no sponsor wording.
Money played a part. Barclays paid about 40 million pounds a year in 2015, and it kept an official bank role afterwards at roughly a quarter of the title price (Bloomberg, 2016).
The league also changed how it sells. It moved to category sponsors, the way the NFL and the Olympics sell, with Nike becoming official ball sponsor and EA Sports a sports technology partner (Campaign, 2016). On the branding side, the idea was a clean brand with no sponsor attached, borrowed from US leagues such as the NFL (Design Week, 2016).
As for the old naming, the league was Carling from 1993 to 2001, Barclaycard from 2001 and Barclays from 2004 (AFP, via Ahram Online).
Sources split on whether 2016 was a first. Dezeen describes it as the first time the league went without a title sponsor, while Campaign points out that 1992/93 had none either, which makes 2016 the first since then, a gap of 24 years.
The sponsor-free rule only covers the league mark. Category partners still sell around it.
Design Week also reported that the launch palette would rotate every three years alongside sponsorship renewals.
Who designed the Premier League logo and when was it updated?
DesignStudio designed the 2016 identity with Robin Brand Consultants, and Nomad Studio led the 2023 update.
Stuart Watson ran the 2016 work as DesignStudio's executive creative director. Design Week's 2023 report lists him as a founding director of Nomad, so one creative lead sits behind both versions.
The 2016 process began with a brand audit before any drawing. Focus groups went through eye-tracking to show where viewers look first. What came out of it was a kit of parts: logo versions in different sizes, text amounts, background colours and patterns (Dezeen, 2016). DixonBaxi added the on-screen graphics later that year.
Managing director Richard Masters described the result as a visual identity that is relevant and modern, and flexible too (Dezeen, 2016). DesignStudio had already done Airbnb's rebrand (Designboom, 2016).
The stripped-back result followed a wider shift toward minimalist design, with Mastercard among the brands that had moved the same way, per Dezeen.
For 2023, Nomad's brief came down to bigger, bolder, brighter, with the focus on how the brand looks on match day. The light-background and dark-background lion versions were merged into one master asset, because partners and clubs kept mixing them up and producing ghosting effects.
The numbers behind the work are worth a look. The 2016 brand audit found that 90% of stakeholders were fond of the lion, and the designers still made 600 sketches of its face before the final design (Design Week, 2016). That 2016 mark was the league's third identity in 24 years (Design Week, 2016).
The updated branding first appeared on 11 August 2023, in Burnley v Manchester City (Design Week, 2023).
What does the lion in the Premier League logo mean?
The lion stands for strength and nobility, and DesignStudio tied it to the England national team (Design Week, 2016).
As an emblem, the lion follows the usual logic of symbolism in graphic design: a familiar animal stands in for a set of values. Having confirmed in the brand audit that the lion should stay, DesignStudio redrew it rather than replacing it.
The head won out for practical reasons. Eye-tracking showed viewers read the lion's face before the wordmark. The head also works alone as the smartphone app icon, and it doubles as the sleeve badge on player shirts.
Because the face is where the eye lands first, it works as the focal point of the whole mark. So the sketching effort went into the face, while the body and football were dropped.
For 2023/24, Nomad enlarged the lion on sleeve patches, with a gold version for the title winners (FourFourTwo, 2023). Nomad's creative director called the lion the figurehead of the brand.
The redraw divided opinion. Dezeen's roundup of football rebrands notes comparisons between the purple head and The Lion King.
Which colors and typeface does the Premier League logo use?
Premier League Purple is the only official colour, set as Pantone 2627 C on the league's Logo Site. The positive logo set runs in that purple on light backgrounds, and the negative set runs in white on dark ones.
| Colour model | Value | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Pantone | 2627 C | Spot colour printing |
| CMYK | C85 M100 Y6 K38 | Process printing |
| RGB | R55 G0 B60 | Screens (hex #37003C) |
Print teams work from the Pantone reference and screen teams from the RGB values.
The wider palette has changed twice. The 2016 launch used neon shades of green, purple, pink and cyan (FourFourTwo, 2023), and Nomad later folded six solid colours into three gradients (It's Nice That, 2023).
On type, the 2016 wordmark used a custom version of Monotype's FF Mark, replacing the all-capitals wordmark (Design Week, 2016). In 2023 it became two weights of the core typeface, each given a different job (Design Week, 2023).
Shirt lettering is a separate system. It has been sans-serif since 2017 and was reworked by Avery Dennison for 2023/24, with numbers enlarged by 10% (FourFourTwo, 2023).
The two systems move on their own schedules. The 2016 logo shipped alongside the old shirt font for a full season.
Which claims about Premier League logo history are wrong?
Start with the lion. Plenty of pages say the 2016 logo removed it, and that's false. ESPN's launch report said the crowned lion survived with only its head remaining, and FourFourTwo shows that head enlarged on sleeve badges for 2023/24.
Another claim says the current logo dates from 2007. Also false. Dezeen's launch report treats the 2007 outline and sponsor branding as gone from the new mark.
Some explainers repeat both errors, which is why they spread.
Whether the 2023 update was a radical redesign is disputed. Nomad Studio calls its work a radical simplification applied to every element of the brand (It's Nice That, 2023), while Creative Bloq sees the lion in much its 2016 form, with an outline that almost surrounds it.
Both positions hold, because they measure different things. Nomad counts the whole system, from colours and typefaces down to the assets, and the critics compare the lion alone.
Sponsor wording and logo redesigns also ran on different timelines. An explainer that ties the 2007 logo to a sponsor's arrival is mixing the two.
Dezeen, Design Week and the league's own pages carry the dates and agency names. An explainer that cites none of them is a lead, not evidence.
What do the 20 Premier League club crests have in common?
Animals are the most popular theme, while other clubs nod to local history, industry or mythology, according to Sports Illustrated's badge ranking (updated August 2026 for the 2026/27 clubs).
| Motif | Clubs | What the crest shows |
|---|---|---|
| Animals | Hull City, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Sunderland, Liverpool | Tiger, bee, eagle, two black cats, Liver bird |
| Local history | Coventry City, Ipswich Town | Castle, elephant and phoenix; white horse above water lines with castle turrets |
| Letters and trophies | Fulham, Aston Villa | FFC initials as a red silhouette; a star for the 1982 European Cup |
Crests are not fixed. As of October 2022, Footy Headlines counted six clubs in that season's league with no crest update this century: Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest and Southampton.
Five of those six are in the 2026/27 league.
Clubs also backtrack. Aston Villa reinstated its star after the 2023-24 redesign did not catch on. Chelsea went back to an older badge, and Everton corrected course soon after its 2013 rebrand. All three cases come from Sports Illustrated.
Dezeen's roundup of football rebrands adds that Villa was reported to have spent 2 million pounds on a 2016 redesign that appeared to remove a single word; the club said the project cost 80,000 pounds.
Put together, the two sources show that redesigns are common and reversals are not rare.
Not every crest scales well, either. Tottenham's thin lines look elegant but do not always hold up in graphics (Sports Illustrated).
Where can you get official Premier League logo files?
The league's own Logo Site at logo.premierleague.com is the official source, and it releases the files under a licence, not as free-for-all assets.
The licence is non-exclusive and for a stated purpose only. It's open to commercial partners directed by the league and to media organisations reporting on Premier League football. It gives no rights to any other Premier League logo or material, and all use stops immediately if the league withdraws it.
Intellectual property questions go to info@premierleague.com, per the site's terms.
The league's 2016 FAQ adds that logos cannot be used without express permission. Clubs hold their own trademarks, so each crest needs permission from its club.
Third-party sources blur this. Directories such as logotyp.us offer their SVG and PNG files for educational, informational and reference use only, and one Gumroad listing sells vector logos for 50+ clubs from every era in the league.
Wikipedia treats most logos as non-free images used under fair-use rules, and notes that trademark protection applies even where copyright does not. A file being easy to download is not permission to reuse it.
On the file itself, SVG stores the logo as vector graphics, which is why it prints cleanly at any size. It scales without blur, and colours and shapes stay editable in vector tools. The catch is that many upload forms and social platforms reject it.
A PNG is a fixed grid of pixels. It keeps a transparent background and gets accepted almost everywhere, but enlarging it blurs the edges.
That settles the choice. SVG for print and large formats, PNG for web uploads that fix the size.
Premier League Logos FAQ
Which Premier League club has the best crest?
Sports Illustrated ranks Liverpool's crest first among the 2026/27 clubs, ahead of Crystal Palace and Manchester United. It is an editorial ranking of 20 badges and nothing like a design standard, and Hull City sits last.
Who owns the Premier League logo?
The Football Association Premier League Limited owns it; the Logo Site terms call the league the sole legal and beneficial owner and require a copyright notice dated 2016. Club crests are separate, each held by its own club (Premier League FAQ, 2016).
Do Premier League clubs have to wear the league badge on their sleeves?
Yes. Rule M.15 puts the league badge on both sleeves for any club without a commercial left-sleeve sponsor.
Manchester United breached it in the 2026/27 opener against Hull City by wearing the badge on the right arm only (Footy Headlines, 2026).
Did the Premier League release a 30th anniversary logo?
No anniversary logo is documented. FourFourTwo's badge timeline lists no 2022 anniversary version, so pages claiming one are unsourced.
The documented anniversary nod was the 2022/23 Nike Flight match ball, which brought back retro graphics from the first season and carried a crown motif with the number 30 (Soccer Bible, 2022).
How to Date Unlabeled Premier League Logos
Four versions (1992, 2007, 2016 and 2023) can be told apart by what is visible on the image. The football and lion body matter most, then the outline, and the sponsor wording is the fallback.
Check in this order, since each check removes the most versions for the least effort. If the football and lion body are present, the image predates 2016. A crest-shaped outline around it means the 2007 version. An outline that almost surrounds just the head points to 2023 or later.
A pre-2016 image without the crest outline needs a sponsor-wording check instead.
The gaps between visible changes keep shrinking, at 15, 9 and 7 years (1992 to 2007, 2007 to 2016, 2016 to 2023).
The test holds as of 5 November 2026 and gains another step the day the league redraws the lion again.