Germany’s most successful soccer club is changing its color scheme to comply with a new law coming into force next year.
FC Bayern Munich announced last week that it has “modernised the entire color palette of its brand identity” to comply with Germany’s new Accessibility Improvement Act, which will officially be enacted on June 28, 2025. The club has brightened both the red and blue shades in its crest to enhance the contrast between them, making it easier for visually impaired people to tell them apart.
With the new design of the entire brand presence, FC Bayern will offer everyone an improved user experience. The new designs are now being implemented step by step. As there is a single FC Bayern logo with a uniform corporate identity in all operational areas, the customisation is not exclusively digital. A decisive premise in all of the club’s corresponding measures is always to consider the issue of accessibility in order to make access to FC Bayern as easy as possible for everyone.
This is the first time since 2017 that Bayern has tweaked its crest. The overall motif of the blue diamonds from the Bavarian flag inside a red roundel, however, has been used since 1966.
The Accessibility Improvement Act (also known as the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz or the BSFG) was passed in 2021 to align German law with the European Accessibility Act and gave companies that operate business-to-consumer websites until June 2025 to make their websites, services and products accessible to all. This includes but isn’t limited to ATMs, ticketing machines, e-commerce platforms and digital services like banking and media.
The web content accessibility guidelines in the Act include regulating the contrast ratio between text and background colors, as well as alt text for images, captions for videos and complete keyboard navigation. Organizations that don’t comply with the new standards could face fines of up to €100,000.