Football and sports special liveries: national teams, clubs and tournaments

When a Boeing 747 suddenly carries “Fanhansa” instead of “Lufthansa” on its fuselage or a Belgian Airbus taxis down the runway in the national team’s red, things get busy at the fence. Football and sports special liveries are among the most popular subjects in plane spotting: they are emotional, often brightly colored and usually visible only for a short time. In this article you learn which forms exist, which examples are well documented and how to get such an aircraft in front of your lens before it disappears back into standard colors.

Football special liveries: the short answer

A football special livery is an airliner that carries designs of a national team, a club or a tournament. Behind it is almost always a partnership: the airline is the official carrier of an association, sponsor of a competition or jersey partner of a club. Painting or applying decals happens mainly for big occasions – World Cups, European Championships or finals. For spotters, that means: the designs are rare, often limited in time and therefore sought-after entries in any collection.

Basically, sports liveries work like other advertising liveries: the aircraft becomes a flying message. The difference is in the timing. A tournament has a fixed date, and the livery peaks exactly when the team is flying or the fans are traveling.

Four kinds of sports liveries

Not every “football livery” is a complete repaint. To classify your sightings, it helps to keep the forms apart:

Form	What changes	Example	Typical duration
Title swap	Airline name is replaced or supplemented, base paint stays	Lufthansa “Fanhansa”	weeks to a few years
Partial design	Logos, emblem or player designs on the standard fuselage	Turkish Airlines A330-300 with Euro 2016 emblems	one tournament season to several years
Full livery	Fuselage and often the tail completely redesigned	Brussels Airlines “Trident” for the Red Devils	several years
Cabin instead of fuselage	Hardly any outside differences, message inside or in details	Icelandair 757 with player signatures (2016)	short-term

Whether a design is painted or applied as a film depends on size and duration. For short campaigns, film is often the more practical solution, as the article Film or paint explains. What a full paint job costs in time and weight is covered in the post on paint costs and weight.

Germany: Fanhansa and the Siegerflieger

Lufthansa has been a partner of the German Football Association since 2005 and flies the national teams to away matches and big tournaments. Most of the time that happens in the completely normal group livery. For the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the airline tried something unusual: on eight aircraft, short- and long-haul jets, it replaced its own name with “Fanhansa” for a limited time.

The highlight of the campaign was the return flight after winning the title. Lufthansa sent a Boeing 747-8 to Rio de Janeiro to bring the team and families to Berlin. The jumbo carried the Fanhansa logo and the addition “Siegerflieger” (winners’ plane) – a design that became iconic immediately. Instead of converting the aircraft back after the reception, Lufthansa let it keep flying with the design. According to reports, the Siegerflieger was still in service for Euro 2016; there are differing accounts of the exact end.

For Euro 2016 in France, the brand came back: a Boeing 737-300 carried, next to the Fanhansa title, the names of around 300 fans drawn in an online campaign on its fuselage and brought the national team to its base. That turned the livery into a participation project – and for spotters, a design on which fans could actually look for their own name.

More special paint schemes from the Lufthansa fleet and from other German airlines are in the overview Special liveries of German airlines.

Belgium: the Red Devils jet from Brussels Airlines

Brussels Airlines has been designing aircraft as “Belgian Icons” for years – ambassadors of Belgian culture, including Tintin, the Smurfs or Magritte. One member of this series is the “Trident,” a paint scheme in honor of the Belgian national team, the “Red Devils” or “Diables Rouges.” The Airbus of the A320 family carries the team’s colors and the trident as a symbol – fitting the devil nickname.

The first version joined the fleet in spring 2016, shortly before the Euros in France. At the end of 2022, the airline presented a new Trident that honors not only the Red Devils but also the women’s national team, the “Red Flames.” That makes the Red Devils jet one of the few football designs that remain part of the fleet across several tournaments. At Brussels Airport, the chance of seeing it is naturally greatest – but as a short- and medium-haul aircraft, it travels across the whole European network.

Turkish Airlines: tournaments, clubs and basketball

Hardly any airline has put as many sports designs on its fleet as Turkish Airlines. Some well-documented examples:

• Euro 2016: Turkish Airlines was the first airline sponsor of a European Championship. An Airbus A330-300 flew with the tournament’s emblems.
• UEFA Champions League: An A330-300 also flew in a special livery for the top-tier competition. From the 2022/23 season, the airline became a global sponsor of the Champions League.
• FC Barcelona: Between 2010 and 2013, Turkish Airlines was an official partner of the club. In 2012, a Boeing 777-300ER flew in Barça colors.
• Borussia Dortmund: Bundesliga club BVB was also among the clubs sponsored by Turkish Airlines.
• Basketball: From 2010, Turkish Airlines was the main sponsor of the EuroLeague for many years; an Airbus A321 flew with its design. For the 2010 Basketball World Championship, there was a 737-800 in tournament design.

The hub of this fleet is Istanbul Airport. Anyone in Germany hoping for a Turkish special-livery aircraft has the best odds at large airports with many Istanbul connections such as Frankfurt – provided the registration is currently deployed on a suitable route.

More tournament liveries from Europe and the world

Around Euro 2016, it became especially clear how differently airlines approach the topic:

• Austrian Airlines also fielded a special paint scheme for Euro 2016. Anyone who caught it at Vienna Airport back then owns a historical document today. More designs from the Alpine region are in the article Special liveries from Austria and Switzerland.
• Icelandair skipped a new paint scheme but had a Boeing 757 signed by the players and fitted with the addition “Official Airline of the Icelandic National Team” – fitting Iceland’s legendary run at that tournament.
• Qatar Airways has been a FIFA partner since 2017 and flew a Boeing 777-300ER in a tournament special livery for the 2022 World Cup in its home country. The hub is Doha Hamad Airport.

On top of that comes the large field of sponsorship without paint. Emirates, for example, has been on FC Arsenal’s jerseys since the 2006/07 season, later also at Real Madrid, AC Milan and Benfica, and was the jersey sponsor of Hamburger SV until 2020. The fleet did not reflect these partnerships to the same extent, though. Emirates showed sports designs more on the Airbus A380, for example for the 2019 Cricket World Cup or for Wimbledon. For you as a spotter, that is an important lesson: a jersey sponsor is not yet a livery. Only a photo with a registration proves that a design actually existed.

Other sports: All Blacks and more

Football dominates but is not alone. The best-known example from rugby comes from Air New Zealand. For the 1999 Rugby World Cup, a Boeing 747-400 flew with the front-row players on the fuselage and a black tail. Around the 2011 Rugby World Cup in its home country, the airline painted an Airbus A320 and a Boeing 777-300ER completely black, with a silver fern at the rear – a clear nod to the All Blacks. Aircraft of the regional partners also got the design.

The livery is a good example of how closely a sports design can be interwoven with brand identity: black also defines the airline’s regular look. What lies behind such design decisions is covered in the article Livery design explained.

How to catch a sports livery

Tournament liveries have a typical life curve: announcement shortly before the tournament, intensive use during the matches, then often quick disappearance. With a clear routine, you will be at the fence in time.

How to find an aircraft in general by registration or hex code is explained in the article Tracking an aircraft by registration. General strategies for special liveries are summarized in Finding special liveries.

What to keep in mind

• Both sides can differ. With some designs, the left and right sides of the fuselage are not identical. Photograph both if possible.
• Title liveries are easy to overlook. A changed name on an otherwise normal aircraft is hardly noticeable from a distance. Check the registration before you write an aircraft off.
• Document the date. Because tournament designs often fly for only a few weeks, the date of the shot is almost as important as the registration.
• Safety before the picture. When team flights draw fans to the airports, fences and observation decks get crowded. Stay on public areas; what is allowed is covered in the article Is plane spotting allowed?.
• Check rumors. Not every image in circulation is real. Renderings by fans or ad agencies like to circulate as a “new livery.” A design is only proven by real photos with a registration.

Collecting and documenting sports liveries

For many spotters, sports designs become a collecting category of their own: all Fanhansa aircraft, all tournament liveries of one airline or all designs of one competition. To keep the collection meaningful years from now, you note registration, type, airline, date and airport for every photo. Tips for a clean structure are in the article Collecting and documenting special liveries. Other themed liveries, such as for anniversaries or in a retro look, can be organized by the same principle.

Conclusion

Football and sports special liveries are small time capsules: they tell of titles, tournaments and partnerships and often disappear as quickly as they came. From the Fanhansa Siegerflieger through the Belgian Trident to the tournament designs of Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways, the range runs from a simple title to a full livery. Anyone who knows the registration early, sets alerts and documents every sighting cleanly has the best chance of seeing the next sports livery not only in the news.