Fabric Of Leicester – The Wyvern Pattern Explained

Look closely at our new adidas home shirt for the 26/27 season and you'll notice a subtle pattern woven through the fabric. Inspired by the mythical wyvern, it's far more than a design detail – it's a nod to one of the oldest symbols in our history.

2026-07-06T15:00+01:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

06 Jul, 2026

Fabric Of Leicester – The Wyvern Pattern Explained

Look closely at our new adidas home shirt for the 26/27 season and you'll notice a subtle pattern woven through the fabric. Inspired by the mythical wyvern, it's far more than a design detail – it's a nod to one of the oldest symbols in our history.

John Hutchinson

2026-07-06T15:00+01:00

Fabric Of Leicester – The Wyvern Pattern Explained

Look closely at our new adidas home shirt for the 26/27 season and you'll notice a subtle pattern woven through the fabric. Inspired by the mythical wyvern, it's far more than a design detail – it's a nod to one of the oldest symbols in our history.

John Hutchinson

2026-07-06T15:00+01:00

Fabric Of Leicester – The Wyvern Pattern Explained

Look closely at our new adidas home shirt for the 26/27 season and you'll notice a subtle pattern woven through the fabric. Inspired by the mythical wyvern, it's far more than a design detail – it's a nod to one of the oldest symbols in our history.

John Hutchinson

2026-07-06T15:00+01:00

Fabric Of Leicester – The Wyvern Pattern Explained

Look closely at our new adidas home shirt for the 26/27 season and you'll notice a subtle pattern woven through the fabric. Inspired by the mythical wyvern, it's far more than a design detail – it's a nod to one of the oldest symbols in our history.

John Hutchinson

2026-07-06T15:00+01:00

Following the launch of our new home kit, on sale now, Club Historian John Hutchinson explains why it has such strong links to Leicester City's earliest years…

A wyvern is a fictional creature resembling a dragon, distinguished by its two legs, wings and long tail. Long before Foxes became synonymous with Leicester City, the wyvern was closely associated with the Club during our Leicester Fosse days.

Following our foundation in 1884, the Fosse adopted the wyvern as its crest, perched above a shield bearing a five-leaved plant known as a cinquefoil. It remained an emblem of the Club throughout the first two-and-a-half decades of our existence and now provides the inspiration for the pattern running throughout this season's home shirt.

The wyvern was worn occasionally as a shirt crest by Leicester Fosse players. Perhaps due to availability of the day, it wasn’t every single player, but Fosse stars would nevertheless wear a wyvern on their shirts throughout the 1890s before blue shirts were introduced in 1901.

The wyvern also appeared prominently on two Leicester Fosse Season Tickets. The 1891/92 edition marked our first campaign in the Midland League, three years before we joined the Football League. It was also the first season at Filbert Street – then referred to as Walnut Street – although construction delays meant the opening matches were instead played at the County Cricket Ground, Aylestone Park, now known as Grace Road.

One Season Ticket for the 1893/94 season also features the wyvern and cinquefoil, underlining just how closely the symbol was associated with the Club during our formative years.

Another treasured piece of the Club's Heritage collection carries the same emblem. One of the gold medals presented to the Leicester Fosse side promoted to the old First Division for the first time in 1908, it was awarded to defender Harry Thorpe, whose name is engraved on the reverse. Tragically, Thorpe contracted influenza following a Leicester Fosse fixture at Glossop in March 1908 and died later that year.

The wyvern appears elsewhere throughout the Club's archives, too. The oldest shirt in Leicester City's collection, worn by a member of the Leicester Schools team in 1893, features a hand-sewn wyvern. The archives also contain an edition of Wyvern magazine from November 1891. Described as 'a topical, and humorous journal', it was published during the early Fosse era and featured match reports and other stories about the Club.

More than a century after Leicester Fosse first adopted the wyvern, the symbol has returned. Woven into the fabric of the 26/27 home shirt, it reconnects today's team with the Club's earliest identity, celebrating a piece of Leicester City's heritage that has endured through generations.

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