Hampshire’s iconic Spinnaker Tower to be repainted after sponsorship deal ends

One of Hampshire’s most iconic landmarks, the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, is set to return to its original colour scheme as a sponsorship deal with Emirates ran out earlier this year.

The structure, which is one of the tallest accessible buildings in the UK located outside of London, was painted blue and gold in 2015 following a deal with the airline worth £3.5m – which also changed the name to the ‘Emirates Spinnaker Tower’.

But this deal ended as scheduled in June this year, and due to the pandemic was not renewed. Now, the city council does not anticipate a new sponsorship deal “for the foreseeable future”.

The council said that the repainting of the tower back to white next summer will be part of their “routine maintenance schedule”.

The tower, which was built in 2001, will take eight weeks to paint over the course of next summer.

The chance to do so this year was missed, as negotiations towards a new deal were in progress and subsequently fell through.

Over the course of the last five years, the deal brought in an estimated £4.2m to the city’s economy and “boosted Portsmouth’s profile” the council said.

Controversy sparked in 2015 when the airline originally proposed to paint the tower in its own colours of red and white.

These are the same colours of Portsmouth FC rivals Southampton, and a huge backlash from local residents prompted Emirates to change the colour scheme to blue and gold.

In a gesture of goodwill, the company donated the 22 gallons of red paint they had already purchased to community groups in Hampshire.