NATO Tiger Meet and military special liveries: tiger stripes, anniversaries, display teams

A gray Eurofighter is a fine subject. A Eurofighter in orange-and-black tiger stripes taxiing along the runway in the evening light is the reason spotters drive hundreds of kilometers for a single day. Military special liveries are rare, short-lived and tied to set occasions: the NATO Tiger Meet, anniversaries of squadrons and aircraft types, or the display season at airshows. This guide explains where the tradition comes from, how the designs get onto the jets technically, why they often disappear after a year and how you can still get them in front of your lens.

Military special liveries: the short answer

Military special liveries are time-limited special designs on fighter jets, trainers, helicopters or transports, applied for a particular occasion. The three most important occasions are the annual NATO Tiger Meet with its tiger stripes, round anniversaries of units or aircraft types and the display programs with which air forces appear at airshows. Unlike airlines, whose special paint schemes often fly in scheduled service for years, military designs are usually gone again after one season.

For you as a spotter, that means: anyone who wants to collect such jets has to know the calendar. Lucky chance encounters happen, but most good pictures are taken on days when the aircraft are deliberately shown.

Where the tiger stripes come from

The story begins in July 1961. The US Air Force’s 79th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Europe, whose crest shows a tiger, invited two other “tiger” squadrons to the British base Woodbridge: No. 74 Squadron of the Royal Air Force and the French Escadron 1/12 “Cambrésis.” The idea was promoted by the then French defense minister Pierre Messmer. By the second meeting in 1962, eight squadrons took part. Out of this grew the NATO Tiger Association, which still organizes the annual meetings today but formally is not part of the NATO structure.

The admission rule is simple and also the reason for the look: members carry a tiger in their squadron crest. What began as a get-together among comrades is now a multi-day exercise with joint missions in which the squadrons train their cooperation. How the Tiger Meet works as an exercise, who hosts and which prizes are awarded is described in the separate article on the NATO Tiger Meet. Here we deal with what interests spotters most: the paint.

Painted aircraft are a fixed part of the tradition – and part of public relations. Besides the main prize, the “Silver Tiger” for the best squadron, the meeting also gives an award for the best-painted aircraft. The ambition is correspondingly high: in 2018 a Eurofighter of Tactical Air Wing 74 in the “Ghost Tiger” design won this prize, and in 2013 it went to the then Reconnaissance Wing 51 from Jagel.

German tigers in the sky

Germany is well represented in the Tiger family. Full members are Tactical Air Wing 74 from Neuburg an der Donau and Tactical Air Wing 51 “Immelmann” from Schleswig-Jagel. Jagel hosted the 2024 Tiger Meet itself. Neuburg flies the Eurofighter Typhoon, Jagel the Panavia Tornado – two types that look completely different in tiger paint. Where you can see Eurofighters regularly in Germany is covered in the guide Spotting Eurofighters in Germany.

The Neuburg tiger jets have built up a series of their own. In 2021 a Eurofighter received a white-and-blue tiger wrap for the wing’s 60th birthday – according to the Luftwaffe, the seventh “flying tiger” of the Bavarian Tigers. It was designed by a Neuburg graphic designer who had already created the “Cyber Tiger” of 2016.

Tiger Meet year	Host	Notable for spotters
1961	RAF Woodbridge, England	first meeting, hosted by the 79th TFS
2018	Poznań-Krzesiny, Poland	first Tiger Meet in Poland, Eurofighter “Ghost Tiger” awarded
2024	Schleswig-Jagel, Germany	TLG 51 as host
2025	Beja, Portugal	Portuguese squadron Esq 301 as host
2026	Araxos, Greece	335 Mira as host, with spotter day and air show

From tail art to the full scheme

Not every tiger jet is striped all over. To classify your photos, it helps to know the levels:

• Tail art: Only the vertical stabilizer carries a design, the rest stays in normal gray. This is the most common variant because it takes the least effort. At the 2018 Tiger Meet, for example, a Belgian F-16, a Spanish and an Italian Eurofighter and a Swiss F/A-18 showed such tail designs.
• Partial scheme: Tail plus the top of the fuselage, tanks or engine intakes. The design often runs over the spine up to the nose.
• Full scheme: The whole aircraft carries the design, including the underside. These jets are the main stars of every spotter day.

When documenting, take a look at the serial: military jets wear no civil registrations but serial numbers such as 31+18 in the Luftwaffe. How these numbers are built is explained in the article on Bundeswehr aircraft serials. With the number you can later match exactly which jet wore which design in which year.

Foil instead of paint: how the designs get onto the jet

In the Luftwaffe, “special livery” is mostly an imprecise term. Many designs are applied as foil. A well-documented example is Eurofighter 31+18 of Tactical Air Wing 73 “Steinhoff” from Laage, which in 2019 got the “Carbon Warrior” in blue and yellow for the wing’s 15th Eurofighter anniversary. According to the Luftwaffe, the process went like this:

The consequence for you: the technical approval for such a wrap is generally valid for one year and can be extended. In practice the design lasts roughly until the next scheduled maintenance; for the Carbon Warrior, the Luftwaffe cited around 200 flight hours. After that, the jet comes out of the hangar in standard gray again. If you want a scheme, you should not count on “next year.”

Anniversaries: wings, types, homecomings

The second big occasion is anniversaries. Military units like to celebrate founding anniversaries, the introduction of a type or special events with a colorful jet. In the Luftwaffe, according to media reports, such designs require approval, are allowed only on special occasions and are limited to a maximum of one year. A few examples show the range:

• Wing anniversary: The white-and-blue tiger from Neuburg in 2021 celebrated two dates at once – 60 years of the wing and five years of full membership in the Tiger Association.
• Type anniversary: The “Carbon Warrior” from Laage marked 15 years of Eurofighter operations in the unit that was the first in the Luftwaffe to receive the type.
• Return home: For the return of Tactical Air Wing 71 “Richthofen” to Wittmund in 2025, after several years of construction work at the air base, a Eurofighter got a special design with the lettering “Back Again.”
• Namesake: The same jet is bright red – a nod to Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Baron,” after whom the wing is named.

More on anniversary designs in the civil sector, such as round birthdays of airlines, can be found under Anniversary liveries. The design logic is similar; only the lifespan is usually much longer at airlines.

Display teams and solo displays

The third occasion is the stage. Aerobatic teams fly in permanent team colors – strictly speaking, these are not special liveries but the team’s standard scheme. They are still exciting for spotters because they show types in a look that exists nowhere else:

Team	Country	Type	Color scheme
Red Arrows	United Kingdom	BAE Systems Hawk (since the 1980 season)	Red with white stripes
Patrouille Suisse	Switzerland	Northrop F-5E Tiger II (since 1995)	Red and white with a Swiss cross on the underside
Frecce Tricolori	Italy	Aermacchi MB-339	Blue with tricolor
PC-7 Team	Switzerland	Pilatus PC-7	Red and white

For collectors on a deadline: the Swiss Air Force has announced that it will end the Patrouille Suisse by the end of 2027 with the retirement of the F-5 Tiger; the PC-7 Team will then take over as the national aerobatic team. An overview of all teams is provided by the article European aerobatic teams.

The actual special liveries fly on the solo displays. Many air forces send a single jet through the airshow season, and it often gets a design of its own. A well-known example is the Belgian F-16 Solo Display: for the 2022 season it got the colorful “Dream Viper,” which was named most spectacular color scheme at the Royal International Air Tattoo 2022. In February 2024 the Belgian Air Force announced that it would not continue the Solo Display – partly because of the changeover to the F-35. The 2023 season was thus the last. Such endings are typical: with every change of type, the corresponding display jets disappear too. How to shoot such airshow performances is shown in Photographing airshows.

Farewell liveries: the last appearance

A special case is designs marking the farewell of a type. When a type goes out of service after decades, the last unit often sends one jet on the rounds in a retro or farewell design. For spotters these are doubly valuable subjects: the design is unique, and the type disappears from flight operations entirely afterward. In Germany this concerns the Tornado in the coming years, which is being replaced by the F-35. Whether and in what form there will be farewell designs is decided by the units themselves – it pays to keep an eye on it.

If you want to see retired jets in historic colors, you will find them in museums. The Military History Museum Berlin-Gatow airfield shows the aviation history of the Bundeswehr (the German armed forces); the associated spot is described under Luftwaffe Museum Berlin-Gatow.

How to catch military special liveries

Military jets follow no public flight plan. That is why the hunt works differently from airline special liveries, which you can follow by flight number.

Some Tiger Meets offer spotter days of their own, in 2026 at Araxos, for example, with a separate date before the air show. For the German calendar, the Bundeswehr Day and Luftwaffe open days are the most important source. Big stages with many display jets are also the Royal International Air Tattoo in Fairford and the ILA Berlin. Which shows are worthwhile overall is summarized in the overview Airshows in Europe.

At the fence of a military airfield, different rules apply than at a civil airport. Read the article Photographing military airfields: rules beforehand and follow signs and instructions. An example of an established location at a military airfield is the Teveren spotters’ hill at Geilenkirchen. For identifying types at the fence, Recognizing fighter jets in Europe helps, and how to keep an eye on military aircraft online is explained in Tracking military aircraft.

Documenting: what you should record

Because military designs fly for such a short time, clean documentation is more valuable than for any airline livery. For every photo, note at least:

• Serial number of the jet, not just the type
• Unit and home base
• Name of the design, if it has one, such as “Ghost Tiger” or “Dream Viper”
• Date and place, including the occasion such as Tiger Meet, airshow or spotter day
• Extent of the paint: tail art, partial or full scheme

How to build a collection from this is shown in Collecting and documenting special liveries. The basics of hunting liveries in the civil sector are covered under Finding special liveries.

Conclusion

Military special liveries are the most fleeting subjects in aviation. Tiger stripes have been part of the NATO Tiger Meet since 1961, anniversaries bring colorful wraps onto fighter jets, and solo displays carry their designs across the airshows for exactly one or a few seasons. Technically, many designs are wraps with a limited approval – after the next maintenance the scheme is often gone. If you want to collect them, plan around spotter days, open days and airshows, document every serial number and respect the rules at the military fence.