The 2026-27 NBA season will open with another jersey-to-cardboard wrinkle: the league’s newest rookies will wear NBA Debut Patches for their first regular-season appearances, while three of last year’s major award winners will carry Gold Logoman patches throughout the schedule.
The debut patch program is back for a second season. Each member of the 2026 Draft class will have a special patch attached for his first NBA game, with Topps set to remove those pieces for one-of-one autographed trading cards. The patch makes the first night on an NBA floor part of a later collector chase, turning an already significant rotation milestone into a single-card item.
The year-long Gold Logoman treatment belongs to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Cooper Flagg. Gilgeous-Alexander enters the season wearing the patch after winning the 2025-26 Kia NBA MVP award, while Wembanyama will have one after being named Kia Defensive Player of the Year. Flagg, the 2025-26 Kia Rookie of the Year, rounds out the group.
Those three patches will sit on the back of their uniforms for the full 2026-27 campaign. Topps will also use the game-worn Gold Logomans in limited trading cards, creating another set of high-end memorabilia pulls tied directly to the league’s recent award history.
The patches join a separate uniform marker for LeBron James, who will wear a commemorative patch recognizing his 24th NBA season. Between the rookies making their first appearances and James extending one of the longest careers the league has seen, opening-night jerseys will carry pieces of both ends of the NBA timeline.
