Champions League
The brand identity for this year’s Champions League final was themed around the ‘urban playground’ vibe of Munich and the street art displayed across the city. For the roll of honour pages in the 2025 programme, which list all previous winners of the competition, we decided to create a wall of football fan stickers. We asked designers across the TwelfthMan studio to help, producing a variety of stickers for each time with different creative styles, resulting in a striking spread that built on the aesthetic of the final.
Inside the programme, we decided to use elements of the visual language of the final branding to create an expressive hand-rendered effect, evoking the street art inspiration of the branding. This personal touch extended to the articles in the programme too, with journalist and author Graham Hunter writing a powerful piece reflecting on his memories of the illustrious competition, from childhood to the present day.
Women’s Champions League
Similarly to our approach for the men’s Champions League final programme, we took inspiration from the city of Lisbon for key elements of this publication. We used a pattern based on the tiles that adorn the city’s walls for the programme’s cover, creating a striking abstract design that fit neatly with the names and logos of the finalists.
For the team section of the programme, we created distinctive hand-drawn opening pages for Arsenal and Barcelona, as a hint to the creative approach fans take to the women’s game. Our writing in the programme also celebrated this aspect of the sport, with Lizzie Coan interviewing a number of fans about what makes the women’s game so special and the creative ways they support their beloved teams.
Europa League
The roll of honour section in the Europa League programme also offered up a great opportunity for our designers to put their own creative stamp on the programme. We created a hand-rendered stitching effect for each winner’s badge on a texture suggestive of a shirt, to create a distinctive page celebrating the winners.
We also utilised the patterns within the Europa League brand in a new, expressive way on the programme’s cover, creating a unique graphic response which celebrated elements of Bilbao.
Conference League
The Conference League is still a young competition, and gives an opportunity for smaller teams to make their mark on the European stage. This year, it also gave eventual winners Chelsea a chance to find their rhythm with a new set of young players. We commissioned former player and current pundit Pat Nevin to write a piece for the programme about this new Chelsea generation, using his time at Chelsea to reflect on what the team had done well this season.
On the design side, we used the energy wave and dynamic grid elements of the Conference League brand to inject a sense of energy into the design, and created holding shapes layered with cutout images on the team openers to create a visually rich encapsulation of the tournament.