Women's and youth national team shirts exist for the Nations League 2026/27 season, but they are not the adult shirt with a smaller label on it. They run on their own sizing systems, their own fit rules and their own availability, and that difference decides whether a family order works or ends up in a return pile. This guide covers how the three size systems actually work, which nations carry the smaller versions, and how to pick one that fits.
Every kick-off time in this article is European local time — Central European Summer Time up to 25 October 2026, then Central European Time from 26 October onward.
Key takeaways
- There are three separate size systems in this range, not one: a men's run measured across the chest, a women's run measured across the bust, and a youth run given as an age band.
- The size letter means nothing across those systems. A women's L and a men's L are different garments, and the measurement printed on the listing is the only thing that settles the fit.
- Availability is uneven in a way that decides where you should look first. Germany carries the second-largest catalogue in the store and no women's shirt at all, while the Netherlands carries eleven youth shirts and one women's shirt.
- The women's run has a real hole in it. Nothing is listed between XXL at 44.5 to 48.5 inches of bust and 3XL at 53 inches.
- The youth run ends at age fifteen, so a teenager moves to the adult sizes by measurement rather than by label.
- A pre-match top is the cheapest way to cover a whole family at one fixture, and several of them are produced in a women's grade and a youth grade as well.
Why the same shirt comes with three different size systems
The adult shirt you know from club football is measured one way. On this range that measurement is the chest, and the run runs from XS at 31.5 to 35 inches through to 5XL at 63 to 68 inches. That nine-step ladder is the same on every men's national team listing in the competition, whether the shirt belongs to England or to Belgium.
The women's version is a different ladder, measured across the bust, and it ends at a different place. The bust figure runs from 29.5 to 32.5 inches at XS up to 57 to 61 inches at 4XL, and 4XL is the last size: the men's run goes on to 5XL, so a shopper who needs the very top of the range will find the two runs finish in different places.
The youth version abandons measurement altogether and gives you an age band instead: S is age eight to ten, M is ten to twelve, L is twelve to thirteen and XL is thirteen to fifteen. The toddler and preschool grades exist too, but on far fewer listings, and they are labelled in years rather than chest sizes: 2T is age one to two, 3T is two to three, 4T is three to four.
So the word "size" covers three incompatible things here. Establish which system a listing uses before anything else. If it says bust, it is the women's run. If it says chest, it is the adult run. If it says age, you are looking at a youth garment and the letter tells you little beyond which band of children it was cut for.
How the women's size run is labelled, and the gap inside it
Here is how the three runs compare, using the measurements printed on the listings themselves.
| System | How it is measured | Smallest | Largest | Number of steps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men's adult | Chest, in inches | XS, 31.5 to 35 | 5XL, 63 to 68 | Nine |
| Women's adult | Bust, in inches | XS, 29.5 to 32.5 | 4XL, 57 to 61 | Eight |
| Youth | Age band | S, age 8 to 10 | XL, age 13 to 15 | Four |
| Toddler | Age band | 2T, age 1 to 2 | 4T, age 3 to 4 | Three |
The gap in the women's run is the practical detail that catches people out. After XXL, which covers a bust of 44.5 to 48.5 inches, the next size listed is 3XL, which starts at 53 inches. No size covers the 48.5 to 53 inch range, so a shopper whose measurement falls in that band has to choose between a 3XL that sits looser through the body and an XXL that sits closer. There is no middle option to search for, and the same hole does not exist on the men's run, where XXL runs 48.5 to 53.5 inches and 3XL picks up immediately after.
Two other differences matter before you compare one listing with another. The women's figures are quoted as a bust measurement and the men's as a chest measurement, which sounds like a technicality but is not, because the two are taken slightly differently and a shirt graded for one does not follow the other. And the women's run reaching only 4XL means the two ends of the range are not symmetrical, so a large-framed buyer cannot read across from the top size on a men's listing.
How youth sizes are labelled by age instead of measurement
The youth run on these listings is short by design. Four sizes cover the whole span, from age eight to age fifteen, and they are labelled with an age range in brackets rather than a measurement: S is age eight to ten, M is ten to twelve, L is twelve to thirteen, XL is thirteen to fifteen.
An age band is a guide rather than a measurement, and the two middle bands are noticeably tighter than the outer two. Eight to ten is a two-year span, then ten to twelve is another two years, but twelve to thirteen and thirteen to fifteen cover a single year each. A child at the top of the twelve-to-thirteen band is nearly the same size as a child at the bottom of the thirteen-to-fifteen band, so those two sizes overlap far more than the labels suggest. That is the real trap: two children a year apart can be labelled into different sizes while needing the same one.
The age grading also stops. Nothing in this range is listed above fifteen, so a teenager buying a national team shirt moves from the youth run into the adult sizes and is measured across the chest like everyone else. The toddler grades go the other way. Only one listing in the whole national team range carries them, a toddler shirt from the Portugal collection graded 2T, 3T and 4T, and a preschool grade appears on a single pre-match top from the France collection. For a family with a very young child, the realistic starting point is a pre-match top rather than a match shirt.
Which nations actually stock women's and youth shirts
Availability is the part of this that surprises people, because the size of a country's following tells you almost nothing about how many smaller shirts it has. Across the fifteen national team collections carried in the store there are 198 listings in total, of which 24 are women's shirts and 51 are youth shirts. The remaining 124 are adult sizes.
| National team collection | Total listings | Women's | Youth | Adult |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Argentina | 46 | 4 | 10 | 32 |
| Germany | 42 | 0 | 5 | 37 |
| Italy | 25 | 4 | 5 | 16 |
| Netherlands | 18 | 1 | 11 | 6 |
| England | 14 | 6 | 3 | 6 |
| Spain | 14 | 2 | 4 | 8 |
| Portugal | 14 | 3 | 5 | 6 |
| France | 10 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| Croatia | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Belgium | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Greece | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Wales | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Norway | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Denmark | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Serbia | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Germany is the sharpest illustration. It has the second-largest catalogue in the range and not one women's shirt, so a shopper looking for a German women's version has to look elsewhere entirely. The Netherlands is the mirror image: eighteen listings, and eleven of them are youth grades, making it the deepest source of smaller shirts in the competition. England sits at the other end of the women's column with six, the widest women's selection of any League A nation, and it is the only collection where a single listing is labelled for both women and youth at once.
Two further practical points. Turkey and Czechia have no collection page at all in the store, so neither has a smaller shirt to find. And Argentina sits outside the Nations League groups but carries ten youth listings and four women's ones, which makes it a better source for smaller sizes than several League A nations despite not appearing in the group tables.
How the four groups compare on smaller sizes
Breaking the same numbers down by group shows a sharper split than the national totals suggest, because the groups pull in different directions.
| Group | Nations | Women's listings | Youth listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | France, Italy, Belgium | 6 | 10 |
| A2 | Germany, Netherlands, Serbia, Greece | 1 | 17 |
| A3 | Spain, Croatia, England | 9 | 9 |
| A4 | Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Wales | 4 | 5 |
Group A2 is the youth-heavy one, with seventeen youth listings against a single women's shirt. That is the group where Germany and the Netherlands meet on 16 November, and it is the group where a family watching that fixture will find child sizes easily and adult women's sizes almost not at all. Group A3 is the opposite: nine women's listings, the best of any group, alongside nine youth ones, which fits a group where England and Spain both carry smaller sizes for either side of the family.
Group A4 has the thinnest overall coverage, five youth listings and four women's across four nations, and two of those nations have no smaller sizes whatsoever. A family following Portugal or Norway through that group has options, and a family following Denmark or Wales does not.
Cropped cuts and the smaller pre-match tops
The two details that change how a smaller shirt feels in wear are the cropped cut and the pre-match top. The cropped cut shortens the body so the shirt sits at or just above the waistband instead of reaching the hip. It is a separate production rather than a resized copy, so it is listed and priced on its own. Italy is the only nation in this cycle offering the cropped cut in women's sizing, and it does so in both the home colour and the away colour. The cropped women's shirt in the Argentina collection is a different thing altogether, a retrospective piece from 2022 rather than part of this cycle's range.
A pre-match top is where a family order becomes straightforward. These are cut more loosely than a match shirt, sit over a base layer, and carry the same crest and colours. Several are produced in a women's grade and a youth grade: a grey version for women and for youth in the England collection, a blue youth version and a royal preschool version in the France collection, a black one in the Netherlands collection, a red women's version in Norway, a red youth version in Portugal, and youth versions for Germany and Argentina. Three are collaboration pieces with fashion labels rather than plain club-issue designs, and those are the ones most likely to sell out of a small size run first.
For a household where the adults and the children want the same fixture, a pre-match top is the lowest-cost way to do it. The sizes are graded more forgivingly, the price sits below the match shirt, and the fit works across a wider age range than graded match shirts do.
What happens when a child grows between matchdays
Nothing in the youth run goes above fifteen, so a family covering both the November window and the season after it is planning across a boundary rather than inside a single range. The second block of matchdays falls between 12 and 17 November, roughly seven weeks after the September opener, and a youth shirt is cut for a band rather than a measurement, so it holds up better than a fixed-size adult shirt would.
Two cases come up repeatedly. The first is the child near the top of a band: twelve to thirteen and thirteen to fifteen each cover a single year, so a child at the top of the lower band is already close to the size of a child at the bottom of the upper one. Buy for where the child will be in November rather than where they are on the day of the order. The second is the child who has just turned fifteen and moved into the adult run, where the measurement is chest rather than age and the letter no longer tells you anything on its own.
Measuring a shirt before you order
Take the measurement from the body and then compare it against the numbers on the listing, not against the letter. For a bust measurement, run the tape level around the fullest part of the chest, under the arms and across the back, keeping it snug but not pulled tight. For a chest measurement, do the same across the widest part of the chest and shoulder blades.
When you have a garment you already like, measure that instead and compare it to the chart. Lay it flat, measure armpit to armpit and double it, then measure from the collar seam down to the hem. A shirt that already fits you and that you can still get hold of is a better reference than a tape measure, because it tells you how that specific cut behaves once it has been washed.
Questions supporters ask about women's and youth shirts
Are the women's and the men's shirts from the same team cut differently?
Yes. A women's cut is built on a different block: narrower through the chest and shoulders, shorter in the body and cut to sit closer at the waist. The size numbers do not carry across between the two. A women's L and a men's L are different garments, and the measurement printed on the listing is what decides the fit, not the letter on its own.
Why is there no size on the women's list between XXL and 3XL?
Because the run jumps. The women's sizes run XXL at 44.5 to 48.5 inches of bust, then resume at 3XL from 53 inches, and nothing covers the 48.5 to 53 inch range. If that is where your measurement falls, the realistic choice is the 3XL, which will sit looser through the body, or the XXL, which will sit close. There is no middle size to search for.
Which ages do the youth sizes on these shirts cover?
The youth run in this range is four labels: S for age eight to ten, M for ten to twelve, L for twelve to thirteen and XL for thirteen to fifteen. Nothing is listed below eight or above fifteen. Toddler sizes appear on one listing only, the Portugal toddler top graded 2T, 3T and 4T, and the France pre-match top carries the preschool grade.
Can a child wear the adult shirt instead of the youth one?
Often, yes. A children's chest measurement of 31.5 to 35 inches lands in the adult XS, and the adult shirts are cut with more room through the shoulders. What you give up is length, since an adult shirt falls past the waist of an eight-year-old. Under this cycle the youth run also stops at fifteen, so a teenager moves to the adult sizes by measurement rather than by label.
How many women's and youth shirts should I expect for one nation?
It depends on the nation rather than on the competition. Across the fifteen national team collections there are 198 listings, of which 24 are women's shirts and 51 are youth shirts. England carries six women's shirts, the Netherlands eleven youth shirts, and Germany, with the second-largest catalogue of the lot, carries no women's shirt at all.
What does a cropped label on a women's shirt actually mean?
It means the body of the shirt is made shorter, cut to sit at or just above the waistband rather than reaching the hip. It is a separate production from the regular version rather than a resized copy, so it is listed and priced separately. Italy is the only nation in this cycle offering the cropped cut in women's sizing, and it does so in both the home and the away colour.
Where to start
Start with the nation you want and then read the size system on the listing, in that order. Browsing by the audience rather than the team is the fastest way to find what is in stock: the women's jersey collection and the youth jersey collection both list the smaller versions across every nation, and the Italy national team collection is where the cropped women's cut sits in both colourways. If your fixture is in the November window, the pre-match tops are worth checking first, because they are graded more loosely and are the version most likely to fit a mixed-age household at one match.