JD Sports puts 25-plus talents into a future-facing Christmas ad
Footballers, DJs and designers share the frame as JD Sports trades seasonal nostalgia for a story about what young people create next.
For JD Sports, the end of the year is not necessarily a cue to slow down. Its Christmas message is aimed at young people who would rather make a track, customise an outfit or plan their next move than look back at a perfect festive memory.
That idea shapes the retailer's 2026 campaign, “Create the New”, introduced on November 6. Instead of building another sentimental holiday story, JD has assembled musicians, footballers, designers and digital personalities in a film about what comes next. The premise is familiar to a generation that moves between those interests without treating them as separate worlds.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- A Christmas film that treats December as a starting line
- How music and football build the same creative world
- Why JD is moving beyond the usual festive formula
- What marketers can learn from the next-generation cast
A Christmas film that treats December as a starting line
Christmas advertisements tend to return to a small collection of images: crowded dining tables, homecomings, familiar songs and gifts wrapped in nostalgia. JD's film starts from a different question. What if December were the moment to prepare for something new rather than to replay something old?
“Create the New” brings together more than 25 people from music, sport, fashion and online entertainment. Spanish footballer Ferran Torres appears alongside designer Antonia Bronze. Argentine singer Emilia Mernes and rapper Ele A share another part of the story. Elsewhere, artists collaborate in a makeshift music studio while a larger group gathers around a party atmosphere.
More than 25 talents JD Sports' Christmas cast spans athletes, musicians, designers and young creatives, as disclosed in the retailer's campaign materials.
The soundtrack is “Not Over Yet,” the 1990s dance track by Grace and Paul Oakenfold. That choice adds a useful twist. The campaign is looking forward, but it borrows a familiar club record rather than pretending youth culture begins from zero. A recognisable sound can become the background for new combinations of people and ideas.
The campaign extends JD's “Forever Forward” positioning. Paul Orange, the retailer's managing director, described the intention in the official announcement as “celebrating a generation that is making its own opportunities and taking culture forward.” The distinction matters: the cast is not being presented simply as celebrities who make Christmas shopping more glamorous. Their work and creative identities are the subject.
How music and football build the same creative world
One of the film's most revealing choices is to put creative collaborators on the same level as recognisable sports stars. Ferran Torres and Lauren James can bring football audiences into the story, but the studio sessions with Sammy Virji, Josh Baker, CHRIS STASSY, Skye Newman and Kai Saunders give music-making a similarly prominent place.
The video, published by the brand's verified YouTube channel on November 6, makes the cast and the campaign's future-facing mood visible rather than leaving the idea as a tagline.
For a sports-fashion retailer, those combinations are not random. Football shirts, sneakers, club music, streetwear and creator-led videos routinely inhabit the same visual world. JD's film puts that overlap on screen. A footballer does not need to deliver an endorsement speech; a DJ does not need to explain footwear features. Both can show how the brand wants to sit inside a broader youth scene.
There is a risk in a celebrity-packed holiday campaign: if every appearance is just another cameo, the film becomes a roll call. JD's more interesting creative decision is to show people doing things together. The musicians make music; designers are shown creating; football talent shares the frame with people from other disciplines. The activities give the audience a reason to understand why those people belong in the same story.
This is still advertising, not evidence that young consumers embraced the message. JD has not disclosed verified results for the film's sales impact, reach or audience response. What the campaign establishes is its creative proposition: shared interests are the connective tissue.
Why JD is moving beyond the usual festive formula
JD is not arriving at this idea from nowhere. Its 2025 Christmas campaign, “Where Are You Going?”, handed phones to 286 young people and built the film around their own footage. The earlier work made young participants part of the production, rather than using them only as an audience demographic.
“Create the New” follows that direction but changes the format. A more polished multi-talent film replaces the phone-shot experiment, while the underlying argument remains consistent: the retailer wants to be associated with young people's ambitions, tastes and evolving identities.
The comparison with other sports retailers is instructive. Sports Direct and Nike's 2026 holiday campaign features Erling Haaland and a team of sporting personalities helping people choose gifts around athletic potential. It gives Christmas shopping a clear role in the narrative. JD goes in another direction, using the season as a backdrop for creative momentum rather than putting gift selection at the centre.
Neither route guarantees a better commercial result. The useful difference is in what a shopper is being invited to recognise. One campaign begins with the person receiving a gift. The other begins with the person the audience wants to become.
The timing also helps explain the tension. The official JD campaign is built around the idea that a young consumer may view the year ahead as an opportunity for reinvention, even while the retail calendar tells brands to focus on the holidays. That is a cultural claim about aspiration, not proof that every member of Gen Z thinks alike.
What marketers can learn from the next-generation cast
The most useful lesson from “Create the New” is not that every Christmas commercial needs an athlete, a DJ and a fashion designer. It is that an advertising season can be approached through the actual interests and ambitions of the people a brand hopes to reach.
- Build a story around what talent does. JD places musicians in creative sessions and pairs athletes with designers. Those relationships are more meaningful than a sequence of faces appearing in branded outfits.
- Make cultural interests overlap naturally. Sport, music and style are treated as adjacent parts of everyday life, not isolated content verticals. That gives a multi-person cast a coherent reason to appear together.
- Keep the brand platform consistent while changing the format. JD's 2025 phone-shot film and its 2026 ensemble production look different, but both develop the broader “Forever Forward” idea around young voices and possibilities.
- Separate cultural fit from performance claims. The film offers evidence of who was cast and how the concept was produced. Without disclosed audience or sales results, its effectiveness remains a question for subsequent measurement.
A holiday campaign does not have to abandon nostalgia to feel contemporary. Even JD's soundtrack carries the memory of an earlier dance era. What changes here is the direction of travel: the old reference is used to create something together, not to recreate a lost moment.
For marketers, that is a more transferable observation than the size of the cast. People may come to a campaign through an athlete, an artist, a designer or an internet personality, then discover that their interests intersect. The brand's work is to make those connections credible.
JD's Christmas ad ultimately asks viewers to think about the year ahead while everyone else is encouraging them to revisit years gone by. Whether that produces stronger results remains unreported, but as a creative choice it gives a crowded festive advertising season a distinct point of view.
