Erling Haaland’s new haircut was revealed on his social media accounts on Sunday, 23 August 2026, hours before Manchester City opened their Premier League campaign against Bournemouth at the Etihad Stadium.
The Manchester City and Norway striker posted images of the various stages of the cut on Instagram and X, as reported by Sky Sports.
The short style ditched the long blonde hair he had worn throughout his rise at the club.
How Haaland revealed his new haircut
Instagram carried the finished look first. The 26-year-old posted a close-cropped buzz cut in place of the long blonde hair he had worn for most of his four seasons in English football, a change made public only hours before kick-off. He captioned the image:
“New season, new trim.”
On X, the striker set out the sequence rather than the result, publishing a series of images showing the various stages of the haircut. The style he settled on recalled his earlier years at Borussia Dortmund.
Haaland captioned that post:
“New hair don’t care.”
Why Haaland had kept the long hair until now
The long hair had been a deliberate choice. In an interview in July 2026, Haaland traced it back to advice he had been given by Zlatan Ibrahimović, the former Sweden striker, whose counsel he repeated word for word:
“Zlatan, you know what he told me? ‘Never cut your hair because the strength is in the hair.'”
Ibrahimović’s advice held for four seasons. Haaland finished as the Premier League’s top scorer in three of those four campaigns after joining Manchester City from Borussia Dortmund in July 2022, and the hair became as recognisable as the goalscoring record attached to it.
Recognition grew sharply at the 2026 World Cup. Norway reached the quarter-finals under his lead, and he added more than 32 million Instagram followers across the 39-day tournament, the largest gain of any player at the finals.
Fans took the look with them. Supporters wore Haaland wigs during the tournament and a lookalike contest was staged in Miami, turning the blonde mane into shorthand for the player himself.
Sunday’s post removed that shorthand in a single image.
What the new haircut meant for City’s season
The timing placed the change at the start of a season of transition at the Etihad Stadium. Pep Guardiola stepped down as manager at the end of the previous campaign, and Enzo Maresca, previously in charge at Chelsea, took over a squad Haaland had led in attack since 2022.
Maresca’s first competitive fixture in charge produced a heavy defeat. City lost 3-0 to Arsenal in the Community Shield the weekend before, leaving the new manager and his squad to answer that result in front of their own supporters at the league opener.
Bournemouth arrived at the Etihad Stadium that same afternoon, which meant the new haircut went straight onto the pitch rather than sitting on a phone screen. Whatever the reaction online, the first competitive judgement on Haaland’s season came within hours of the post.
