Houston Texans head coach Demeco Ryans gathers his defense to talk about the final play for the Indianapolis Colts during the second half of an NFL football game in Houston, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
The Houston Texans will wear their new rivalry uniforms, which will be unveiled later this summer, against the Indianapolis Colts in a prime-time game on Nov. 19 at Reliant Stadium.
The NFL’s rivalry uniforms project allows teams from two divisions per year to design an alternate uniform that they’ll wear just once a season for a home game against their biggest division rival. After the AFC East and NFC West broke ground on the concept last season, now it will be the AFC South and NFC North’s turn.
The bad blood that exists with the Tennessee Titans, who took the Houston Oilers history with them when they moved and have leaned more into those Luv Ya Blue days in recent years, would have seemed to make the Titans an easy choice for the rivalry game. However, despite some shots taken at the Titans over the years by Hannah McNair, the team’s chief community officer and vice president of the Houston Texans Foundation, the decision was more about the impact of the games in recent years. The Titans have had four straight years of double-digit losses, while the Colts have been in the thick of the division race. It also helps that the Colts’ visit to Houston is the only prime-time game on the Texans’ 2026 home slate.
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“What it really came down to in the conversations with the McNairs was really this: What division team has most recently presented ourselves with the most competitive games and games of consequence?” Texans senior vice president and chief marketing officer Doug Vosik told the Houston Chronicle. “If you look at the past couple years especially, it has been the Colts … Those games of consequence are what turns into really good rivalries in the past, present and future.”
While that may raise eyebrows among some, what the fans really care about is the look of the uniforms. The new gear will be unveiled in late August and available for purchase in early September, but Vosik, who says he gets a kick out of all the fan renderings and guesses on social media, gave us some clues about what his design team was thinking during the process.
For one, the team is encouraging fans to wear H-Town Blue for that Thursday night game. When designing the team’s new uniforms that were unveiled in 2024, the Texans came up with a version that relied heavily on the light-blue color once worn by the Oilers, but also featured prominently in the city’s history, including the city’s flag, old-fashioned street tiles and the old-school Houston police cars.
Although much was made on Titans owner Amy Adams-Strunk fighting all of Houston over use of the color, Vosik says there was no pushback on these upcoming alternates.
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“You’ve heard Hannah talk a lot about the importance of H-Town Blue as part of our culture here,” he said. “She’s been really vocal and direct in the press that every time we have a uniform refresh, every time we have an opportunity, we’re going to keep advocating for a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. We really mean that and take that to heart and we know that’s still a driving force behind a good amount of our fan base to represent a color of the city and a color of the culture.”
So, H-Town Blue? Check. It sounds like there also will be plenty of Battle Red.
Of the four new uniforms unveiled two years ago, the best-selling versions are the H-Town Blue and the Battle Red options. Vosik says those are also the two favorites of the players, who will wear Battle Red against the New York Giants on Oct. 25, so “we also wanted to steer towards that direction.”
As for the theme of the unveil, it will be hyper local and not a repeat of what other teams have done, including the Astros, who put out a fan favorite when they released the Space City alternate uniforms in 2022.
“How can you tell a local story that we haven’t told yet?” Vosik said of the Texans’ thinking. “What’s a local story or something that inspires us creatively that teams have no tapped into yet? When I say that, you know a lot of teams have tapped into Space City, and it’s so great, but what’s a story that hasn’t been told? What’s something that’s maybe a market secret that not everybody knows about but a lot of Houstonians take pride in or once they discover Houston has it, they go, ‘Wow, that’s special, that’s cool.’”
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Vosik also said the team has been dropping Easter eggs since the end of last season by incorporating “a major giveaway” into some of the artwork on the team’s website and social media channels.
It should be mentioned, although not pointed out by Vosik himself, the team has incorporated the design of the H-Town Blue Montrose tiles into some of its designs, although it started doing that during games last season.
Vosik wouldn’t go any further with his hints except to say when we all finally get to the unveiling, “You’ll go, ‘Oh man, they’ve been giving us bread crumbs the whole time.’”
Whatever the look of the uniform, which Vosik also says will include an “indirect” tribute to the team’s 25th anniversary, no conflict with the Titans is expected.
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“At the end of the day, absolutely no one is confusing a Tennessee Titans and a Houston Texans uniform,” Vosik said. “When you add all the branding together and how the whole uniform looks, no one’s confusing them no matter what percentage of H-Town Blue is on that uniform.”