Arsenal Christmas advert 2026: Colin Firth in “’Twas the Season” reviewed

A front room, a Christmas tree, a girl holding a sheet of paper as a voice says “I’m counting on you”. Then Colin Firth walks down a terraced road in Islington under strings of fairy lights, hands in his coat pockets, and starts to narrate. “Quite the season,” he says, before listing “joy” and “festivity… everywhere you look”.

That is “’Twas the Season”, the Arsenal Christmas advert 2026, which the club released on 5 November. It is a film of just over a minute and a half, made by Arsenal’s own in-house team, Arsenal Creative Studio, and it stars Firth alongside Alessia Russo, Riccardo Calafiori, Gabriel Magalhães and hundreds of supporters. It sounds like a Christmas story for most of its running time. It is really the story of the 2025/26 season, which ended with Arsenal’s first league title in 22 years.

Our take: a big step up from the club’s first Christmas film, with perfect casting, a neat double meaning and the best single gag of the festive season so far. It is also a victory lap, and a victory lap only works in the year you win. As a piece of fan service it is close to flawless; as an advert for the Christmas shop it barely tries.

Credits

• Client: Arsenal; Jodie Sayer, head of brand and marketing
• Creative: Arsenal Creative Studio (in-house)
• Director: Si&Ad, Academy Films
• Cast: Colin Firth, Alessia Russo, Riccardo Calafiori, Gabriel Magalhães, with supporters, staff and community figures connected to the club
• Length: 1 minute 37 seconds, with a 15 second cut-down
• Launched: 5 November 2026, on Arsenal’s digital and social channels and the club app, The Arsenal

The brief: Christmas after a title

Arsenal only started making Christmas adverts last year. “Make Arsenal Dreams Come True This Christmas”, which the club called its first-ever Christmas campaign, locked a young supporter inside The Armoury store overnight and let him roam Emirates Stadium until he woke in the home dressing room to find Bukayo Saka standing over him. It was made in-house and directed by Marc Sidelsky through Knucklehead, as Shots reported, and it was a sweet, small, very club-shaped film.

Then the club won the league. Arsenal were confirmed as 2025/26 Premier League champions on 19 May, when Manchester City drew at Bournemouth, ending a wait that went back to the unbeaten side of 2003/04. In February, Arsenal Women had also won the first FIFA Women’s Champions Cup, beating Corinthians 3-2 after extra time at the Emirates.

So the brief more or less wrote itself: carry May into December. “We set out to bring that magic into Christmas with a concept that could stand alongside the biggest festive campaigns while feeling uniquely Arsenal,” Sayer said in the launch release, as Retail Times reported. The commercial job sits alongside it: the film launches the club’s online Christmas Shop on Arsenal Direct, including a special edition Champions range.

The idea: a Christmas story that is really a title race

The whole film rests on one double meaning, and it is a good one. Every line of Firth’s narration works as a description of Christmas and of a football season, from “a bit of stress” and “one or two ups and downs” to a season shared “with families, friends… and a lot of strangers”.

Anyone who has spent a winter in a stand will hear both meanings at once, and the film lets the second one take over gradually. At first Firth is alone on a quiet street, and a neighbour hauling a Christmas tree stops to say “Oh… Mr Firth!” By the halfway point he is wearing tinsel like a scarf and the road behind him is full of people in red and white.

Then the screen goes black and a single star appears. “A story of people following stars,” Firth says, which is the nativity and a fan base in one sentence. The last stretch is pure May: smoke, flags, scarves overhead, “shiny things tied with red and white ribbons” and “wishes coming true all at once”. It ends on the stadium at night with the line “Gifts worth waiting all season for”.

The craft

Firth is the obvious casting and also the right one. He played the Arsenal-obsessed teacher in Fever Pitch, the 1997 film of Nick Hornby’s book about the 1988/89 title season, and he is an Arsenal supporter in real life. He does very little here, which is the point. A quiet, slightly amused delivery stops the narration from tipping into a sermon.

The best moment comes in a café, where Russo, Calafiori and Gabriel sit by a window lined with tinsel. Firth passes and delivers a line in Portuguese, subtitled “Across barrier of language”, a nod to his Love Actually character, who learns Portuguese to propose. When Russo asks what he just said, Gabriel, who is Brazilian, replies “No idea”, and the joke lands twice.

It is shot in a wide, letterboxed frame on real north London streets at night, and the warm amber of the fairy lights slowly gives way to the red haze of flares. The crowd scenes recreate the street celebrations from May, and they feel lived in rather than staged. The film closes outside The Armoury, under a huge banner reading “’Twas the Season” in gothic lettering, in the same blackletter spirit as the Rocastle typeface the club launched in October.

The weakness is the product. Apart from the end line and a quick glimpse of an Arsenal Christmas jumper, there is almost nothing here that tells you what to buy. Supporters can buy the Bruised Banana Christmas jumper Firth wears in the film, but the film never makes a moment of it.

Beyond the film

The campaign is wider than the advert. Arsenal is selling a special Christmas card at The Armoury and on Arsenal Direct, with proceeds going to The Arsenal Foundation. The club has also lined up visits to north London hospitals, a Christmas Day lunch for care leavers and matchday mental health drop-in support, as part of the Premier League’s Together Against Suicide campaign.

The players’ lines in the release are about the same thing. “The celebrations in May, sharing that joy together, were the greatest gift our supporters have given us,” Russo said, as London Now reported. It is a tidy fit with the film’s argument that the season belonged to the people in the street as much as to the team.

The results

It is too early for any. The film went up on Arsenal’s YouTube channel on the morning of 5 November and had passed 30,000 views by the afternoon. The club has not published sales or reach figures for the campaign, so there is nothing yet to judge it on beyond the work itself.

The release names the club’s digital and social channels and its app as the places the film will run, rather than TV. That means the audience is mostly people who already support the club. That makes it a loyalty piece first and a sales piece second.

The legacy: a club becomes a Christmas advertiser

Two years in, Arsenal is treating Christmas the way a retailer does, with a launch date, a hero film, a star and a shop. Sayer’s stated ambition to stand alongside the biggest festive campaigns puts it in the same conversation as John Lewis and Argos. That is a bold claim for an in-house team, and this film largely backs it up.

The problem is next year. The big Christmas advertisers build platforms that can run for a decade, as our guide to how Christmas adverts get made explains. “’Twas the Season” depends on a title win, and football does not hand those out every year. Arsenal will need an idea for the Christmases when May goes badly.

What to steal

• Write lines that mean two things. If every sentence works for the season and for the story, the twist does not need a big reveal.
• Cast someone with history. Firth brings Fever Pitch and Love Actually with him, so the film gets two references for the price of one actor.
• Give your famous faces one small joke rather than a speech. The café exchange does more for Russo, Calafiori and Gabriel than any line about togetherness.
• Use the real crowd. Supporters, staff and community figures make the celebration believable in a way extras cannot.
• Do not forget what you are selling. A jumper worn by the star is a gift idea waiting to happen, so give it a moment on screen.

The verdict

’Twas the Season scores well for craft, thanks to Firth, the night-time photography and a crowd that feels real, and for idea, because the double meaning holds all the way through. Bravery is middling, since a celebrity and a title parade is a safe bet in a year like this one. Effectiveness is held at five until Arsenal publishes evidence, and legs are limited because the idea depends on a trophy. The marking is explained in how we score.

See every UK Christmas advert of 2026 so far, with the films, updated as each one launches.