Boise’s new soccer team releases its name, colors, logo. How do you grade them?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- AC Boise revealed its crest and colors, honoring Basque roots and local wildlife.
- The club will debut in 2026 at a new field on the former Les Bois track.
- USL’s promotion system gives AC Boise a path to move up to the first division.
The Treasure Valley’s new professional soccer team has a name: Athletic Club Boise.
The USL League One club revealed its name, crest and colors in a ceremony Friday night at Expo Idaho, pulling in multiple elements to represent Boise and the Treasure Valley before its first games in March 2026, Boise Pro Soccer CEO Brad Stith told the Idaho Statesman earlier this week.
Stith said the name honors the region’s Basque heritage and establishes the club as the only professional soccer team in the U.S. with Athletic Club before its name.
“While it’s an homage, obviously, to Athletic Club Bilbao, it’s really more of an homage to the entire Basque Country, and being innovative and unique at the same time,” Stith told the Statesman. “You’ve got some teams that are City Name Athletic, but there’s not an AC in the entire professional ecosystem. So that part is different.”
BOISE PRO SOCCER TEAM’S CREST, LOGO
The club’s crest centers around a stylized peregrine falcon — the state’s official raptor, the fastest animal on Earth and an Idaho success story. The Peregrine Fund and the World Center for Birds of Prey south of Boise helped save the falcon from the endangered species list in the 1990s.
The diving falcon comes in the shape of a lightning bolt, a nod to its 200-mph speed and the region’s summer storms.
Stith said the club hosted listening sessions with over 1,000 fans since last fall, and logo options with a bird of prey continually surfaced to the top.
“It was amazing how many people were gravitating towards crests that had birds, or owls, or eagles or something in them,” Stith said. “Being in the Treasure Valley, it’s inherent that we’ve got those around all the time. Some people take those for granted, but not everywhere has that.
“… From a branding perspective, you have a stylized falcon that represents how we want to play. And it definitely has some attitude and some fierceness to the crest that you don’t always see with traditional soccer crests.”
The full crest designed by Boise’s Against creative agency adds several more Idaho elements. The badge features a valley at the bottom and a mountain peak at the top. Vertical lines on the left represent farm fields, and a six-pointed star on the right depicts a star garnet, the Gem State’s official state gem.
WHAT ARE AC BOISE’S COLORS?
AC Boise unveiled three primary and three secondary colors. The primary colors are:
Basque Pride: A kelly green from the diagonal cross on the Basque flag
Raptor Shadow: A black cast by an overhead falcon
Hyperlight White: A pure white from a lightning strike
The secondary colors are:
Summer In Le Bois: A highlighter green to represent the City of Trees
Lupine Bloom: A light purple flower found in Idaho’s mountains
Mountain Dusk: A dark purple cast on the state’s mountains
WHAT ABOUT THE WOMEN’S TEAM?
Friday’s announcement was dedicated to the coming men’s soccer club. Branding for the women’s team will follow next year ahead of its scheduled kickoff in September 2027.
“We wanted to let this grow on its own as the men’s team brand, and see what made the most sense for the women when we’re ready to present that to the public,” Stith said.
WHY NO NICKNAME?
American sports franchises typically revolve around mascots. Think the Boise State Broncos, Idaho Steelheads or Boise Hawks. But after soliciting input from fans, AC Boise chose to follow the European route and forgo a traditional nickname.
“I think they wanted something that was traditional and to let the crest express all the Idaho parts about it and the Boise parts about it — instead of tagging something that you had to be this,” Stith said.
“I think it’s important for people to come up with their own nicknames. You see it through all the Premier League teams all the way down to division five in the UK, right? What fans end up calling you and what they embrace and what they create as your name, it evolves organically. And you have to let that take its course.”
WHERE WILL BOISE’S SOCCER TEAM PLAY?
AC Boise will become the first tenant at a soccer-focused, mixed-use stadium built around the grandstand of the former Les Bois thoroughbred track next to Expo Idaho. The stadium will sit south of a 47-acre park along the Boise River that takes up the majority of the former horse racing facility.
Boise Pro Soccer signed a 30-year lease in February to pay Ada County $150,000 a year for the site. The club will spend at least $9 million to upgrade and expand the existing grandstands from 3,900 seats to at least 6,000 during the first phase. The club must expand the stadium to 11,000 seats within 10 years, according to a contract previously obtained by the Statesman.
Stith said turf installation will start in September after the Western Idaho Fair, which takes place annually at Expo Idaho.
AC Boise will play in USL League One, one of two leagues in the third division of American men’s professional soccer. But the USL will start America’s first promotion and relegation system in 2027-28, meaning Boise could play its way up into the USL Championship (second division) or a new first-division league designed to compete with Major League Soccer.
This story was originally published June 28, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
