The Ottawa Redblacks need a change of course. Perhaps a new look will help.
Mired in a seven-game losing streak that began on Sept. 12, 2025, the Redblacks will be wearing spiffy new uniforms when they host the Toronto Argos on Saturday afternoon (1 p.m.) at TD Place.
Their on-field appearance should jibe nicely with the “Whiteout the Stands” theme being promoted, encouraging fans to show their support of the team, which dropped its 2026 season opener in a rain-drenched 29-21 home loss to the Edmonton Elks on June 6.
A Reversal of the Black
“It’s a reversal of the black, the home uniform that we wear,” explained team president Adrian Sciarra. “Many teams have kind of a home and away that is the reverse of each other. We haven’t done that for the last number of years, so it’s a bit of a change for us. But the black was really popular when we launched it two years ago, and this was the natural evolution.”
The new jerseys, which were to be available starting Monday morning at the team store and on the Redblacks website, are expected to be popular with the fans.
Striking a Balance Between Past and Future
“When we’re designing uniforms, especially here in Ottawa and Ottawa football, we really wanted to strike the balance, like we did on the black, of linking the history of the various generations of Ottawa football into a look that was still contemporary and new,” said Sciarra. “The use of the ‘R’, the striping, those are synonymous with Ottawa football for generations. But the location of the stripes, continuing with our current number and the fonts we use, is still contemporary. So hopefully, we struck the right balance between that nod to the past and that look to the future.”
The creation, of course, didn’t happen overnight.
“Doing a uniform in football is a long process … 18 to 24 months,” said Sciarra. “It goes through lots of iterations from graphic design into production samples, and seeing what they look like, both the retail version and the on-field version, because of cut and fit, those are always a little bit different.”
The photos of the uniforms that accompany this story mark the first official unveiling of the new look.
“You get feedback from ownership and management and players and football ops, and so it’s actually pretty amazing that you go through a process like this for this long, and it hasn’t leaked,” Sciarra said with a chuckle. “I think only a few of (the players) have seen it, and from guys that have seen it, the feedback has been really positive. Some of our players were wearing these at the TSN car wash, what, two months ago? So we’ve kept it under embargo all that time.”
Perhaps the new look will also bring the Redblacks new luck with Mother Nature. The poor weather conditions that haunted the team through too many of its home games last season returned in full force for the season opener, which fell on the same day that brought the hardest rainfall of the year.
