The best rebrands of 2026 so far, ranked

Lacoste put a serif on its wordmark and gave the crocodile its tongue back. Sprite dug Lymon out of the archive. KFC rebuilt an entire global identity around a cardboard bucket. If there is a theme to the best rebrands of 2026 so far, it is that the smartest brands stopped inventing and started excavating.

This is our ranking of the twelve strongest brand identity redesigns launched between January and August 2026. We judged each on four things: whether the idea is sharp enough to explain in a sentence, whether the craft holds up at pack size and billboard size, whether the brand risked anything, and whether the system will still look right in five years. Agency credits and launch months are verified. Where the design press was split, we say so.

A note on scope. We have left out pure logo tweaks, sports kit reveals and anything we could not credit. Late-2025 work appears only in the “ones that missed” section, and is labelled as such.

The best rebrands of 2026, ranked

12. Sam’s Club: A Diamond in the Club (2026)

Walmart’s members-only warehouse chain launched a new identity by Turner Duckworth in June 2026. The wordmark drops to lowercase, set in a custom typeface called Sam Sans, and the apostrophe becomes a diamond that now works as a standalone mark. The blue is brighter. That is the whole story, and that is the point: Turner Duckworth kept every element a shopper already recognised and simply made each one do a job. Forbes framed it as a play for younger members, which is the same brief Costco has never needed. The risk is that lowercase and a brighter blue read as fintech rather than bulk toilet roll. Crown verdict: a tidy, low-risk refresh that earns its place by refusing to over-reach.

11. Xbox: We Are Xbox (2026)

On 23 April 2026 Microsoft retired the Microsoft Gaming name it had used since 2022 and put Xbox back at the centre. The logo is the familiar sphere-and-X, now rendered as a glossy green glass orb on black, a direct callback to the 2001 launch console. The reveal came from new Xbox chief Asha Sharma and Matt Booty, with a “We are Xbox” memo positioning the brand as a challenger. No external agency has been credited, which points to an in-house job, and it shows in both directions: the strategy is clear, the rendering leans heavily on the glassy, glowing style every tech brand seems to have adopted this year. It ranks here for decisiveness rather than design novelty. Crown verdict: a brand that remembered its own colour, which is more than most corporate renames manage.

10. Brompton: Life Unfolded (2026)

Brompton used its fiftieth year to hand Studio Blackburn a global brand platform, launched in August 2026. The London studio kept the folding-bike triptych, held the core brand to a strict blue, and added a bespoke headline face, Brompton Slab, that carries the engineering weight the old system lacked. The clever move is structural: the system is designed to flip to custom palettes whenever Brompton drops a limited-edition collaboration, so the brand can play without the core drifting. Studio Blackburn cut metal letters beside the machines that build the bikes, which is the kind of detail that tells you the studio actually visited the factory. Crown verdict: an engineering brand that finally looks engineered.

9. Radio Times: First Rebrand in Two Decades (2026)

Immediate Media’s listings title unveiled its first major identity change in twenty years in February 2026, designed by Why Projects with lettering by Rob Clarke. The new logotype reinterprets the mastheads of the magazine’s 1970s and 80s peak, paired with Degular for body text and a deep green and bright lime palette that runs across app, website and podcast. An RT digital icon finally gives the brand something to put in an app grid. Creative Review covered the launch on 2 February. This is heritage done properly: the reference is specific, the execution is contemporary, and nothing is nostalgic for its own sake. Crown verdict: a 103-year-old brand that looks like it wants to be around for another century.

8. Threads: Trending Chisel (2026)

Meta commissioned London’s Studio Nari to cut Threads loose from Instagram Sans, and the result landed in June 2026. The new wordmark is angular and forward-leaning, built on a chisel-tip marker idea the studio calls Trending Chisel, with a looping @-inspired glyph that reads at favicon size. Design lead Lauren Davidson told It’s Nice That the goal was “something more ownable that could express the behaviour of Threads”. Brand New reviewed it in July under the headline “Here’s Looking @ You, Kid”, which tells you how the trade received it. The catch is that Threads still lives inside Meta’s ecosystem, and the identity has to feel native there while standing apart. Crown verdict: the first time Threads has looked like a product rather than a feature.

7. Instagram: Instagram Pen (2026)

Instagram’s in-house team, led by creative director Christy Silva and director of brand design Cynthia Pratomo, shipped the app’s first major refresh in over a decade on 13 August 2026. The script wordmark survives, refined to be, in their words, “more confident and restrained”. A new handwriting face, Instagram Pen, joins a widened Instagram Sans and a new mono cut. The sunset gradient is now used sparingly and appears as a light leak, and there is an inverted green and blue on black version. Pratomo told It’s Nice That that every time they stripped out the script, “we became unrecognisable to ourselves”. That is the right instinct. Crown verdict: a restrained refresh from a brand that could have afforded to be reckless.

6. Warburtons: Baked Orange (2026)

Britain’s biggest bakery brand marked its 150th anniversary in March 2026 with a full overhaul by Bristol’s Taxi Studio, with typography from Studio Drama. More than seventy products come under one system for the first time. The wordmark is elevated, the Family Seal of Quality is refined, and a colour the studio calls Baked Orange becomes the shelf-blocking signal. A new custom typeface has, in Taxi’s phrase, the softness and elasticity of baked goods, and a curved device pulled from the wordmark runs through the range. Design Week noted the brief was to resolve a “muddle” of on-pack messaging, which is the least glamorous and most valuable kind of rebrand. Crown verdict: the best packaging system of the year, and it did not need a new logo to do it.

5. Coca-Cola: Make Coca-Cola More Coca-Cola (2026)

On 20 July 2026 Coca-Cola unveiled a new global visual identity system by JKR, with Brody Associates credited by Brand New on type, rolling out across more than 200 markets. The Arden Square is restored as the primary brand mark, the Dynamic Ribbon is brought back as a core element rather than a decoration, and the red and white are tightened for consistency. Cans carry vertical wordmarks, multipacks carry horizontal imagery, and Coke Zero Sugar moves to white logos. JKR’s own line is that the job was to “make Coca-Cola more Coca-Cola”, which is a brief most agencies would be too proud to accept. Nothing here is new, and that is the discipline. Crown verdict: the world’s most recognisable brand tidying its own house, and doing it without a single unnecessary idea.

4. Tinder: The T Persona (2026)

Tinder’s first rebrand in nearly a decade, by New York’s Porto Rocha, launched in July 2026. The flame is sharper, the wordmark goes all-caps, a serif joins the palette for the first time and the colour system expands beyond red and pink. The idea that lifts it above a visual refresh is “T”, a fictional dating columnist who gives the brand a voice it can argue in. Creative Review and It’s Nice That both led on that persona, and rightly: a dating app’s problem is tone, not typography. A motion system built around the swipe gesture keeps the product and the brand in the same room. Crown verdict: the rare rebrand that understands the brand’s problem was what it said, not what it looked like.

3. KFC: The Bucketverse (2026)

Jones Knowles Ritchie and KFC’s in-house team rebuilt the whole brand around one object in June 2026. The bucket becomes, in JKR’s words, “an unmistakable beacon of flavour and culture”, and everything else follows from it: a refreshed Colonel, an expanded palette, new proprietary type, restaurant interiors, packaging, app and tone of voice. Creative Boom called it the Bucketverse and the name stuck. The bravery is in the reduction. Most fast-food identities try to own a colour or a mascot; KFC chose a container and made it the world. Brand New’s review title, “Highly Qualified for the Job”, suggests the critics agreed. Crown verdict: the most complete identity system of the year, built on the least likely hero.

2. Sprite: It’s That Fresh (2026)

London studio forpeople gave Sprite a new global identity in March 2026, rolling out across 180 markets alongside the “It’s That Fresh” platform. The Lymon symbol returns after years in the archive, the wordmark goes bold and white against a green-and-white system, and the visual language is all bursts of liquid and motion. There is a sonic identity, Sprite Sound, and new packs for Sprite and Sprite Zero Sugar. forpeople’s own case study admits the brand “had diluted its sharpness”, which is the kind of honesty briefs rarely contain. Creative Review covered it on 23 March. The result feels like Sprite in 1998 with the production values of 2026. Crown verdict: the year’s best example of a brand finding its edge by going back for it.

1. Lacoste: The Serif and the Tongue (2026)

Lacoste announced its new visual identity on 21 April 2026, developed with Commission Studio. A custom serif replaces the sans wordmark, drawn from the archives with what the brand calls “precision of its proportions, rhythms and spacing”. The crocodile evolves rather than changes, and its red tongue becomes more visible. The palette restores three original greens plus clay, for the courts, and farine, an off-white lifted from René Lacoste’s first blazer. His handwriting appears on Café Lacoste. Creative Review’s Inside piece ran on 14 May. What makes this number one is discipline: every decision points at 1933 without a single retro flourish, and the system will scale from a polo label to a flagship. Crown verdict: the year’s most confident brand identity redesign, and the one other fashion houses will be copying by Christmas.

The ones that missed

Not every rebrand in 2026 went to plan. Three deserve a mention, one of them from late 2025 whose consequences landed this year.

Cracker Barrel (August 2025, fallout in 2026)

The American restaurant chain unveiled a simplified logo on 19 August 2025, removing the “Uncle Herschel” figure that had sat beside the wordmark since 2015. The backlash was immediate and political, and the company reversed the logo on 26 August, one week later. The story did not end there. On 27 July 2026 Cracker Barrel announced that chief executive Julie Felss Masino would step down on 10 August, with David Deno succeeding her. Whatever the design merits, this is now the case study every CEO will cite when a rebrand deck lands on the desk.

Tennessee Titans (March 2026)

The NFL franchise revealed its first logo and uniform overhaul since 1999 on 12 March 2026, dropping the sword and flame motifs and leaning into Houston Oilers heritage with a revived Titans blue. The logo had leaked on Fanatics merchandise in February, and the early reaction was, by most accounts, loud and mostly negative. It softened after the official reveal. The lesson is about sequencing rather than design: a leak turned a heritage story into a damage-control exercise.

CD Projekt Red (August 2026)

The Cyberpunk and Witcher studio refreshed its brand and logo on 25 August 2026, with Mucho credited by Brand New. The raróg bird is redrawn to be, in the studio’s words, “more mature, confident, and energetic”, with red placed at the heart of the palette. The fan reaction was intense enough that Creative Bloq called it the weirdest backlash graphic design has ever seen. Gaming audiences treat a studio logo as a fan crest, and any change reads as betrayal. The design is fine. The audience was never going to accept it in week one.

How we ranked these

We looked at every 2026 rebrand covered by Brand New, Creative Review, It’s Nice That, Design Week and BP&O between January and August, and kept only those with a verifiable agency credit and launch month. Each was scored on idea, craft, bravery and legs, then argued over. Packaging systems that touch millions of shelves (Warburtons, Coca-Cola, KFC) were weighed against identities that mostly live on screens (Threads, Instagram, Calendly), which is why some of the year’s most-discussed digital work sits mid-table. Also notable but outside the twelve: JKR’s Great Value refresh for Walmart in April, Smith & Diction’s Calendly in August, DXD’s new identity for TBWA in August, and House of Fraser’s March renaming as Frasers, which we could not credit to a studio. We will revisit this list in December when the full year is in.