Gobik presents the new kit for its flagship team under the banner The Art of Celebration, a collaboration with African artist Karabo Poppy that goes beyond the launch of a new kit to sit at the intersection of art, identity and competition. A project that offers a cultural reading of sport, deliberately moving away from the conventional codes of sports communication.
The collaboration is born as a genuine dialogue between two ways of understanding celebration: one that emerges from art and another that arises from competitive effort. This is not an aesthetic exercise, but a shared narrative that connects emotion, belonging and collective expression.
Karabo Poppy is a South African illustrator, graphic designer and urban artist based in Johannesburg, widely recognised for a contemporary visual language deeply rooted in African identity. Her work combines colour, geometry and storytelling to celebrate community, pride and collective memory, and has been applied both in urban spaces and in cultural projects and international brand collaborations with names such as Nike, Google, Coca-Cola and Netflix. Her artistic practice consistently moves between the symbolic and the collective, using design as a tool for cultural expression.
The creative starting point is Karabo Poppy’s work and her research into African Portrait Cloths: traditional African textiles that act as vehicles of identity, pride and shared memory. Far from being mere decorative patterns, these fabrics tell personal and collective stories and are used to mark moments of unity, celebration and community. This symbolic weight is transferred to the design of the jersey for the new Gobik Factory Team kit for the 2026 season.
In parallel, competitive cycling shares a very similar impulse. Competing is not simply about crossing a finish line; it is about being part of a team, sharing codes, embracing collective effort and celebrating everything that comes after the tension. The collaboration between Gobik and Karabo sits precisely at this point of convergence: when art and competition speak the same language without the need for explanation.
Under the claim The Art of Celebration, the campaign is built around a clear central idea: celebration is not the end of effort, but an essential part of competing. Art celebrates through colour, line and rhythm; cycling does so through self-improvement, emotion and shared experience. The new kit is conceived as a visual translation of this idea.
At its core is the unisex CX Pro 4.0 jersey, conceived as the canvas on which Karabo develops her artistic proposal, translating the language of African Portrait Cloths into the world of competition. A garment designed to perform at the highest level, while also communicating something deeper than performance alone. The set is completed by the X bib shorts, available in men’s and women’s versions, providing a sober and balanced technical foundation that reinforces the competitive character of the kit.
With The Art of Celebration, Gobik positions itself as a brand capable of uniting high performance, design and emotion, understanding competition as a cultural and human phenomenon. Because, ultimately, competing is also a way of celebrating who we are.