Across this weekend, Icarus Football will be hosting its 3rd annual Icarus Cup at Drexel University's Vidas Athletic Complex in Philadelphia, and in more ways than one, this will be the biggest Cup yet.

Created to celebrate Icarus' two primary passions - grassroots football and kit design - the Icarus Cup will this year increase not only the number of teams competing (80 in total this year, up from 70 last year) but also the off-field entertainment at the tournament, with the intention of making something closer to a 'festival of football' than a simple 7-a-side tournament. Think your classic all day round robins you played as a kid, but with a considerably larger beer garden presence.

Given Icarus's first love is kit design, the crowning achievement of the Icarus Cup - before a ball is even kicked - is the formidable collection of completely unique designs created explicitly for the tournament.

The Icarus design team set themselves a higher bar than ever this year, running a 'design gauntlet' to make sure they came out with 86 distinct designs that were as vibrant and striking as possible. At the same time, they wanted to curate a variety of traditional and non-traditional colourways and patterns, whilst also paying tribute to the tradition of goalkeeper kits by making 6 keeper-specific designs.

The Icarus Cup is intended as a celebration of everything Icarus love about the sport, so in that spirit, Icarus invited a number of their favourite designers to create tournament-exclusive designs, including Matt Wolff (Nigeria 2018 World Cup, PSG x Jordan), Floor Wesseling (Netherlands and Portugal 2014-16, USMNT) and Phil Delves (of Phil's Corner and The Football Shirt Collective, designer of Red Star FC's 125th anniversary kit). It very much takes a village to get 86 quality designs out the door!

On the pitch, the Cup will see 80 teams compete in seven divisions: three open divisions of varying skill levels; two mixed divisions; and, for the first time, two divisions for women/non-binary players.

Meanwhile, off the pitch, Icarus will be bringing the festival atmosphere with an Icarus pop up shop, games, freestyle soccer juggling from Foreign Freestylers, and a beer and food garden served by some of Philly's most beloved drink brands and food trucks.  If that wasn't enough, evening social events will bring stand up, live music and a DJ to round it all off.

It's been months in the making, and Icarus has made every Icarus Cup shirt available on their website for preorder and you can grab them from  icarusfc.com .

Shop all Icarus shirts, here.