On the eve of Major League Baseball’s 2026 regular season, we’re starting to get some leaks.
Posted to Reddit by user DannoTheIceman and then later shared by Jomboy Media’s Talkin’ Baseball Facebook page, we’ve got ourselves what is, very likely, an early look at the new 2026 Pittsburgh Pirates City Connect jersey.
The three photos show a black jersey with “PIRATES” across the chest in gold, in a tattered flag-like typeface. The collar has gold striping, as do the sleeve stripes. A new “PGH” Pirates patch, including crossed swords and the red bandana-wearing pirate from the club’s existing branding, is on the left sleeve.
Inside the back collar, we get a partial look at what appears to be the Pirates’ team motto of “WE BLEED BLACK AND GOLD” in that same style lettering as the front jersey wordmark. The back of the jersey features the player’s last name in a standard block gold font with the number below, again in gold, again in the same typeface as the front lettering and inside collar. The MLB logo at the back is in a black/gold/red colourway.
I haven’t seen the new City Connect jerseys for 2026 yet, so I cannot confirm or deny that these are legit, but they sure appear to be, and the fact that they were shared by the social media account of a company that’s partially owned by Major League Baseball certainly raises an eyebrow, or perhaps even the old Jolly Roger.
The Pirates were one of six teams to reveal their inaugural City Connect uniforms during the 2023 season. That uniform featured a gold jersey base that was made up of hundreds of small and subtle repeating symbols, all representing a different element of the city, slowly fading away to a bold “PGH” wordmark across the chest in black.
At the time, we were told that clubs could expect to release a new City Connect design every three seasons, which would put the Pirates in line for a new uniform here in 2026. The other five teams that would now be eligible to change in ’26 from that batch of teams that unveiled in 2023 are the Atlanta Braves, Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners, Cincinnati Reds, and Baltimore Orioles. They would join teams from 2021 and 2022 that had not yet released a new uniform: the Chicago Cubs, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Milwaukee Brewers, and San Diego Padres. None of the 2026 City Connect clubs has yet to be officially revealed.
