JD Sports Christmas advert 2026: Create The New swaps festive nostalgia for young creatives

JD Sports has made a Christmas advert with almost no Christmas in it. Create The New is a 90-second film from Uncommon Creative Studio, directed by the Reid Brothers, in which more than 25 names from sport, music and fashion spend the holidays making things together. It launched on 6 November, the day after a sold-out JD pop-up rave in Amsterdam.

The work

The cast includes Ferran Torres, Lauren James, Sammy Virji, Josh Baker, Skye Newman and Chris Stassy, filmed in the places where they make their work. Torres works on a shirt with the designer Antonia Bronze, and musicians build a track in a makeshift kitchen studio, as Marketing Week reported. The soundtrack is Not Over Yet by Grace and Paul Oakenfold, the 1995 dance anthem.

Josh Tenser, executive creative director at Uncommon, said: “Every December, brands tell young people to slow down. JD doesn’t.” The campaign runs on TV, digital, social, outdoor and in stores across the UK and JD’s European markets, according to DesignRush. It sits under Forever Forward, the platform Uncommon built for JD.

Why it matters

This is Uncommon’s fourth Christmas for JD, and each one has looked different. The Bag for Life in 2023 marked 25 years of JD’s duffel bag with Central Cee and Kano. The Family Portrait in 2024 put Central Cee, Maya Jama and Paddy Pimblett in one frame, and last year’s Where Are You Going? was shot on phones by young people themselves.

What holds them together is an attitude rather than a character. While the supermarkets sell nostalgia, JD sells what comes next, and dropping Christmas almost entirely is a confident call. The casting is exactly right for that audience.

The cost is memorability. Without one idea to hang it on, Create The New plays more like a brilliant brand reel than a Christmas advert anyone will quote. Last year’s phone-shot film had a hook people could describe in a sentence, and this one does not.

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