Blackburn Rovers Football Club, founded in 1875 and based at Ewood Park in Lancashire, England, has used a series of crests that reflect both the club’s own history and the wider identity of the region. The current badge is a circular design built around the red rose of Lancashire, a symbol that has appeared on every version of the club’s crest since 1974.[1]
Design and History
Blackburn Rovers have used six badge variations across their history, with three stemming from the same core design first introduced in 1990.[1] The club’s earliest crest was a blue Maltese cross, adopted from 1875 to 1878, reflecting the founders’ connections to Shrewsbury School.[2][1]
For the 1960 FA Cup final, the club adopted Blackburn’s town coat of arms as its crest, a shield that recognised the region’s industrial heritage with a white background denoting the textile industry, a spool of a loom, a white horn between two golden diamonds, and three bees.[1] This design remained in use until 1974.
In 1974, Blackburn adopted the red rose of Lancashire as the club’s badge, adding the initials BRFC beneath it in the same shade of red.[1] This simpler rose-and-initials crest was used from 1974 to 1989.[2]
The first version of the current badge was introduced for the 1989/90 campaign. The club kept the Lancashire rose but added a stalk with leaves and re-introduced the Latin motto from the town’s coat of arms, placing it in a box beneath a circle containing the rose. A blue ring carrying the club’s name and founding year bordered the circle.[1] The badge has since been modified only twice in the 2000s with new colour palettes.[1]
Meaning and Symbolism
The red rose on the badge is the sign of the House of Lancaster, the county in which Blackburn sits, and has been present on every version of the club’s crest since 1974.[1] The Latin motto “Arte et Labore”, meaning “By art and by labour”, was re-introduced to the badge in 1990 from Blackburn’s town coat of arms, which had been used from 1960.[1] The club’s founding year, 1875, is also carried on the badge.[3]
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