Barbour Wallace and Gromit film returns for Christmas 2026 with a winter walk gone wrong

Barbour has brought back Wallace and Gromit for Christmas, making this its fourth festive film in a row with Aardman. The 90-second stop-motion film, directed by Aardman’s Steve Harding-Hill, sends the pair out on a Christmas Day walk that goes wrong, with a new Wallace invention and a few familiar faces along the way. It went live on Barbour’s YouTube channel on 5 November.

The work

Harding-Hill, Aardman’s creative director of short form and commercials, described it as a festive romp in which the duo’s stroll goes wrong and it is left to Gromit, with help from Barbour, to come to the rescue, as Aardman announced. In the key visual Wallace is in a beanie and tartan scarf, Gromit wears a dog coat, and a signpost points to Barbour Way, a nod to The Barbour Way, the campaign the brand launched in September with Sienna Miller and Idris Elba. Shaun the Sheep, who starred in Barbour’s 2023 and 2024 films, peers over the dry-stone wall behind them.

Alongside the film, Barbour has made a limited capsule of accessories, including knitted scarves, hats, caps, tote bags, key fobs and a dog coat, on sale from December at Barbour.com and selected stores. Jamie McCall, Barbour’s global marketing director, said Wallace and Gromit were the perfect characters to show off the brand’s tartan. Creator Nick Park offered the pun: “I’m sure Yule love it!”

Why it matters

Barbour is one of the clearest cases of Christmas consistency paying off. Last year’s Wallace and Gromit film, built around a gift-wrapping robot called the Gift-o-matic, earned what System1 called “an exceptional 5.8-Stars” on its Test Your Ad platform, putting it in the top bracket of that season’s Christmas ads. System1’s broader finding, set out in our Christmas ad playbook, is that returning characters score well above new creative.

The fit is the reason it works. A heritage British outerwear brand borrowing Britain’s best-loved plasticine pair gets warmth and patriotism without having to claim either itself, and last year Aardman wove the products into the animation rather than cutting to them at the end. Putting Gromit in a dog coat also gives the capsule its most giftable item.

What to watch is whether a second year with the same duo can hold the score. Aardman’s formula of a Wallace invention and a mishap is reliable, but it is the same shape as last Christmas, and the Barbour Way signpost suggests the brand wants this film to work as part of a year-round platform rather than as a stand-alone treat.

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