The Washington Commanders have revealed their fully redesigned 2026 uniform closet. The refreshed line up reintroduces Super Bowl-era sets while debuting a new alternate look, the “Hail Raiser,” and a new alternate logo.
The Hail Raiser features a spear knifing through the burgundy W on both sides of a black helmet, almost meeting in the front. The franchise featured a spear with a feather dangling from it on its burgundy helmet from 1965-68. Washington team president Mark Clouse said they wanted to bridge “the evolution from the Redskins era to the Commander era.”
“The spear is just such a great device,” he said. “That was part [of] the heritage of the team and also can live in this ecosystem that we’ve been building around defining a Commander.” Commanders chief marketing officer Patrick Arthur said: “We wanted to bring back all the traditional elements,” , “so when people come to Northwest Stadium next year and they’re watching the game, they see their team that they grew up rooting for on the field.”
Some Native American groups and advocates are already criticizing the alternate “spear” logo, calling it a backslide toward indigenous imagery that caused the team to change its name in the first place, as well as an inappropriate cultural appropriation.
“The Washington Commanders’ decision to update their logo is disappointing and inappropriate to say the least,’’ the Association on American Indian Affairs said in a statement to USA Today Sports. “It is time to stop repeating this cycle and listen to Native Peoples who have been clear, consistent, and unwavering on this issue: We are not your mascot.’’
Washington will use block numbers on their jerseys, and have returned to three stripes down the middle of their helmets – white on the outside and gold in between. The Commanders will continue to use a gold W on their glossy burgundy helmets as well as on the black alternate ones. The black helmet will have two gold stripes with a burgundy one down the middle. The burgundy helmets will feature a gold face mask. The uniforms will have numbers on the side of the jerseys and return to stripes down the side of the pants.
The new jerseys do not incorporate the word “Commanders” as other uniforms have in the past. Clouse, who worked in the food industry from 1996 until 2024 when he joined the Commanders, said he learned during that time that “you do not change multiple things at the same time. You evolve very slowly and purposefully.”
