Major League Soccer and adidas have shaped North American soccer culture since the league’s founding in 1996. For MLS’s 25th season, the brief was to create a campaign rooted in togetherness that acknowledged the league’s origins while speaking to the present.

The client asked for a visual language drawn from VHS-era broadcast graphics and late-1990s soccer culture. Instead of leaning into nostalgia, the reference was reinterpreted to feel contemporary and fresh. A monochromatic blue VHS texture became the foundation of the visual system, selected for blue’s long-standing association with MLS, its role as a unifying league color across diverse club identities, and its clarity across broadcast, digital, and live environments. This system was codified into a campaign toolkit and deployed across all 26 clubs, enabling each team to adapt the language across their own channels while maintaining a cohesive league-wide identity.

The campaign launched with a film marking 25 years of MLS. From there, the system carried across motion graphics, custom football scarves, live environments, and an interactive gallery featuring the adidas and MLS jersey archive, presenting the league’s history as a living culture rather than a retrospective. The work culminated in a runway presentation where models moved across an LED floor animated with team flag graphics and scored with a mix of club chants and contemporary music.

Forward25 reaffirmed MLS as a collective identity shaped by time, place, and community.