Celtics are about to break 78 years of tradition on Tuesday night

Tuesday night’s matchup with the Philadelphia 76ers will mark the debut of the Boston Celtics' 2025-26 “City Edition” uniforms. The team shared the news on their social media pages the morning of their third meeting with the Sixers.

The new uniforms feature a white base with gold font and black trim. Those three colors make up the side stripe, while the collar and arm lines are just solid gold.

Most notably, it’s the first-ever Celtics kit not to feature the color green. According to the team, the premise behind the design is to celebrate the franchise’s championship-filled history.

For the first time in 78 years, the Celtics won't be wearing green

“The Celtics’ 2025–26 City Edition jersey pays tribute to the franchise’s legendary past while carrying forward the grit and determination that define Boston basketball,” the official description reads. “Accented with gold to symbolize success and triumph, the uniform celebrates the enduring legacy of what it means to be a Celtic.”

On a scale from 1-10, this year’s City Edition is probably a five. It’s not bad, but it’s not good enough where I’d want to see it be a part of the catalog every year. Fine is the perfect word to describe it.

The simple change of making the black trim green could’ve made this one special. It simply feels wrong to have the Celtics wearing something completely devoid of the color central to their branding.

This was also an extremely low-pressure season for the design team. After the “Action Green” colorway from last season, they could’ve rolled out just about anything and people would’ve been happy.

There literally cannot be enough criticism for the 2024-25 City Editions. Like, not a single good thing has happened since the Celtics put those uniforms on.

They were disgusting.

Neon green has absolutely no place on any NBA uniform, never mind one of Boston’s.

As far as where these new threads rank in relation to some of the other Nike-fueled Celtics alternates, they’re probably in the lower half. The green and gold ones from the 2018-19 season are at the top. There are a few others in between, then you’d slide this season’s in ahead of the “Banner Edition” alternates from the 2020-21 season.

The pinnacle, of course, is the old St. Patrick’s Day uniforms. I write about these every time I get the chance because they were perfect. Green base, gold lettering, white trim. Just different enough from the standard aways without doing too much.

For now, all we can do is sit here and hope that Nike has the class to return those masterpieces to the court.