TwelfthMan were commissioned by UEFA to create the unique brand for the 2026 Champions League final in Budapest, in collaboration with local artist Márton Nemes.
Each year, UEFA commission a brand identity for the final which draws on the host city’s heritage and culture to create a distinctive look for the event. This year, we worked closely with Nemes to create a design that celebrates Budapest’s vibrancy and energy, with the colour palette inspired by the city’s glowing neon signs and vivid night-time lights of its ruin bars.
We helped take the brand from initial concepts all the way through to a fully flexible identity, which employs the full force of Nemes’ creativity but is also practically useful for such a globally significant event.
A tale of two cities
Nemes’ love for his dual-natured home city of Budapest shines through in his vibrant design for this year’s Champions League final. Buda and Pest, the two cities that combined to become today’s modern Budapest, provided plenty of inspiration for the final brand, with the city’s contrasting mix of old and new visible in his work.
His artistic style is also a combination – one of fluid, energetic shapes and colours, which collide with technical, engineered construction. In his design, a mixture of recognisable symbols like the Danube, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge and Archangel Gabriel statue combine with expressive and painterly graphics, resulting in a modern interpretation of a historic city.
Where old meets new
In communist Budapest, neon lights were everywhere, displayed prominently on bars and businesses and shops. Nowadays, most of this has disappeared or has been replaced with LED lighting, but the old-school neon remains a very strong childhood memory for Nemes. This, combined with his love of modern rave culture and Budapest’s famous party scene, has resulted in a cacophony of luminous yellows and pinks bursting out of the artwork.
A brand beyond the event
In addition to being displayed across the city, stadium, broadcast and online, the identity extended into an expressive licensing package with designs for product and apparel. As an extension of the brand this has meant the identity can live on beyond the final whistle, becoming a recognisable symbol of the year the final came to Budapest.
