A familiar jersey is making its return this season.
The Los Angeles Lakers announced Friday morning that they will be bringing back their 'California Dream' City Edition jerseys for the 2025-26 season into their attire rotation.
The Lakers dropped a highlight mix donning the black jerseys as part of their announcement to bring them back, which they last wore in the 2023-24 season when they were first introduced.
"The California Dream" returns. @bibigoUSA x City Edition pic.twitter.com/HvkFiXwBfC
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) August 1, 2025
“The Los Angeles Lakers are bringing back their 2023-24 'California Dream' City Edition uniform for the 2025-26 season,” the team said in a statement. “The uniform, presented by Bibigo, celebrates the evolution of the Lakers’ identity.”
What makes these uniforms stand out isn’t just the rare black base—paying homage to the Lakers’ move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles—but the design details.
The iconic purple and gold are accented by a triangle-style wordmark on the chest, a tribute to the franchise’s early days in L.A. during the 1960s. This retro-inspired font layout, with a purple trim, echoes the look the team wore when they first took the court on the West Coast.
The numbers are also the same style as jerseys from 1999 to 2017, an era that was ruled by Kobe Bryant.
And this is the closest thing we'll get to those forever iconic Black Mamba jerseys. (PLEASE BRING THEM BACK!)
The Lakers only had four jerseys in rotation last season, three of which are guaranteed to remain: the Icon Edition gold, the Statement Edition purple, the Association white, and the Nike City "Lake Show" Edition, which was their City Edition uniform for last season.
We’ve already seen LeBron James, Austin Reaves, and other Lakers from the 2023–24 squad rock the “California Dream” uniforms. Now, it’s Luka Dončić’s turn to wear them as he leads the charge for a new-look Lakers team.