Sporting Clube de Portugal gets a high-design rebrand inspired by the ’40s

When one of the world’s biggest sports clubs, Sporting Clube de Portugal (SCP), was founded in 1906, it was centered on one code: “Develop the human, then the athlete.” Now, 120 years later, the club is getting a major rebrand that brings that code to the forefront of its identity—with a high-design twist. SCP teaches sports including soccer, futsal, handball, volleyball, and rink hockey for everyone from young kids to elite adults. It’s best known for its men’s professional soccer team, which plays in the Primeira Liga (the top flight of Portuguese football), and has produced generational talents including Cristiano Ronaldo and Luís Figo. This is the first time that SCP has rebranded in 25 years, and the overhaul—led by the global creative agency JKR—encompasses everything from the club’s official crest and typeface to its merch, jerseys, and digital presence. [Image: courtesy Sporting Clube de Portugal/JKR] According to André Bernardo, SCP’s chief strategy and operations officer, it’s a move driven by members, who collectively own and operate the club. For SCP members, “there’s something beyond sports as performance, which is sports as the first step to creating human connections and development—it’s this process of getting there,” Bernardo says. Right now, the club has more than 180,000 members and 200 delegations across five continents. As it looks to expand even further globally in the coming years, members wanted its branding to position SCP as not just a sports club, but also a personal development community backed with deep heritage. [Image: courtesy Sporting Clube de Portugal/JKR] A 1945 crest gets a 2026 upgrade To reimagine SCP, JKR used a simple approach: Rather than inventing any modern assets, the team opted to retool the most iconic motifs from the brand’s history for modern applications. That process started with combing through six years worth of research and interviews, conducted by Bernardo’s team, into members’ thoughts on the identit