Christmas adverts 2025, ranked: every big UK campaign

A widower falls for Keira Knightley at a cheese counter, a carrot gets married, the Grinch discovers Rollback and a father finds a 1990s dancefloor inside a vinyl sleeve. The Christmas adverts 2025 were the strongest crop in years by the industry’s own measures, and the best of them was Waitrose’s The Perfect Gift, a four-minute romantic comedy that behaved like a short film and earned every second of its running time. John Lewis, Aldi and Asda follow, and the full fifteen are ranked below with agency, music and every published System1 or Kantar result.

Two research firms tell two stories about the season. System1’s Test Your Ad panel gave seven adverts its top 5.9 stars, led by Amazon’s re-run of Joy Ride, Waitrose, Coca-Cola, Lego, Asda, Heathrow and M&S Food, and Research Live reported an average of 4.6 stars across the year, the highest in five years. Kantar’s testing named Cadbury’s returning Secret Santa the most effective advert and Coca-Cola second, found that half its top ten were repeats, and left John Lewis, Waitrose, Tesco, Lidl and Morrisons out of that ten altogether. This list uses both, but ranks on idea, craft, bravery, evidence and legs, which is why the re-runs sit lower than their scores.

Every campaign here has been verified against the brand’s own channel, press office or trade coverage. Very and M&S’s clothing and home films are not included because the agency credits could not be confirmed; Cadbury’s Secret Santa is not included because it is a re-run of a campaign first made in 2022. For how these fit into the long history of the genre, see our ranking of the best Christmas adverts of all time.

15 to 11: the Christmas adverts 2025 that did the job

15. Coca-Cola: Holidays Are Coming (2025)

Made with the AI studios Secret Level and Silverside AI, music the Holidays Are Coming jingle, System1 5.9 stars, Kantar second most effective.

For the second year running Coca-Cola remade its 1995 truck convoy with generative AI, in a 60-second Holidays Are Coming and a 90-second Fantastical version in which seals, rabbits and meerkats in jumpers watch the lorries roll through. The research numbers were excellent, and they say more about thirty years of the jingle than about this film. Coca-Cola’s own release called AI “a superpower for execution and production”; much of the audience called the animals creepy, and our history of the convoy explains why the trucks survive anything. Crown verdict: the most effective advert on this list and the least admirable, because the asset did the work and the craft undid some of it.

14. Lidl: More to Value This Christmas (2025)

Agency Accenture Song, music a cover of The Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice, launched 3 November, not in Kantar’s top ten.

A small girl asks why we love Christmas and answers in voiceover, over scenes of families becoming less grumpy and more generous. The film carried Lidl’s Toy Bank, the in-store donation scheme run with the charity Neighbourly since 2022, and The Grocer read the absence of chocolate and the prominence of turkey and vegetables as a careful response to the new HFSS rules. It is gentle and well made, and in a year of rom-coms and weddings it was the supermarket advert people found hardest to remember. Crown verdict: a discounter behaving like a department store, which is admirable, but not this year’s way to be noticed.

13. Morrisons: A Year in the Making (2025)

Agency Leo UK, director Aaron Stoller through Biscuit Filmworks, music Jona Lewie’s Stop the Cavalry, not in Kantar’s top ten.

Morrisons’ Christmas starts in summer: a farmer, bakers and fishermen preparing December’s food months early, with a delivery driver mistaken for Santa for the laugh. The idea, that the supermarket has been working on your Christmas all year, is a sound one for a grocer that makes much of its own produce, and the production design slipped in a tractor that nodded to the old Farmer Christmas adverts. It is honest and warm and about the right thing. Crown verdict: the most grown-up supermarket advert of the year, and the one that needed a character to carry it.

12. Boots: Gift Happily Ever After (2025)

Agency The Pharm, led by VML, directors DOM&NIC through Outsider, animation RASCAL, music Duran Duran’s Girls on Film, launched 4 November.

Puss in Boots goes shopping for his fairytale friends, Rapunz, Snowy, Cinders and the Snow Queen, and finds everything at the beauty counter. It launched at 7am on social and at 8.15pm on ITV in The Martin Lewis Money Show, and Boots called it its most integrated Christmas campaign yet. The pun is the idea and the range is the destination, and both are handled with more swagger than the category usually manages. Crown verdict: a range advert dressed as a pantomime, and better Christmas retail theatre than most of the supermarkets produced.

11. Barbour: Wallace & Gromit (2025)

Made by Aardman Animations, stop-motion, System1 5.8 stars with the strongest category uplift the firm listed.

Wallace and Gromit exchange Barbour tartan scarves in a plasticine Christmas that continues the brand’s habit of borrowing a beloved British character, after Raymond Briggs’s Snowman and Father Christmas in earlier years. It scored as well as most of the supermarkets without a supermarket’s media budget. The craft is the reason: Aardman’s animation is a distinctive asset in itself, and the wax jacket has never needed a hard sell. Crown verdict: the best use of a licensed character this Christmas, and proof that a heritage brand can win the season with charm rather than spend.

10 to 6: the campaigns that earned their place

10. Amazon: Joy Ride (2025)

Re-run of the 2023 film, director Wayne McClammy through Hungry Man, music an orchestral arrangement of The Beatles’ In My Life, System1 5.9 stars, Kantar top ten.

Three old friends buy sledge cushions on the app and hurtle down the hill of their youth. Amazon said Joy Ride was its most successful Christmas campaign and brought it back with a new family member added to the story, and it topped System1’s ranking. It is the smartest media decision of the year and the least creative one. Crown verdict: ranking it any higher would reward a brand for not making an advert, and ranking it lower would ignore that it worked.

9. Argos: There’s More to Argos (2025)

Agency T&P, director David Kerr through Hungryman, launched 3 November, Kantar top ten.

Connie the doll and Trevor the dinosaur ambush Simon Bird, playing a last-minute shopper who dismisses Argos as a toy shop on the phone, until the pair appear in his rear-view mirror to put him right. It is a joke about the brand’s own reputation, which takes nerve, and the mascots are now doing the job Kevin the Carrot does for Aldi: making an argument about range feel like a sitcom. Bird said he spent most of his childhood circling presents in the catalogue, which is the audience in one sentence. Crown verdict: the funniest thirty seconds of the season, from a retailer that has quietly built the best comic characters outside Aldi.

8. M&S Food: Traffic Jamming (2025)

Agency Grey London, starring Dawn French and Tom Kerridge, music Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas, System1 5.9 stars, Kantar top ten.

French sits in a stationary car in a Christmas traffic jam until her fairy alter ego waves a wand and an M&S lorry opens to turn the queue into a party, with Kerridge, who worked on the range, serving the food. Both research panels credit the same thing: five years of one character, one tone and one joke about pâté. It is a product film with a personality, which is the M&S Food formula at its best. Crown verdict: the most consistent Christmas platform in food retail, still working because nobody has been allowed to change it.

7. Tesco: That’s What Makes It Christmas (2025)

Agency BBH London, director Jeff Low through Biscuit Filmworks, narrated by John Bishop over Holly Jolly Christmas, launched 12 November, not in Kantar’s top ten.

BBH refused a hero film and made a series of 10, 20 and 30-second vignettes instead: siblings fighting over a board game, a neighbour who will not leave, colleagues agonising over Secret Santa. The strategy, that Christmas is the mess around the perfect moment, is the sharpest insight of the year and the format suits a grocer that wants to be in every break. Missing Kantar’s top ten is the price of spreading an idea across a dozen small films. Crown verdict: the bravest structural decision of Christmas 2025, and the campaign most likely to be copied next year.

6. Disney: Best Christmas Ever (2025)

Agency adam&eveDDB, director Taika Waititi, animation Untold Studios with Walt Disney Animation Studios advising, launched 10 November, System1 5.8 stars.

Santa mistakes a girl’s doodle for a wish and the drawing comes to life on Christmas morning, in the animated short that leads Disney’s Make Someone’s Holiday Magic campaign with Marine Toys for Tots as charity partner. It is the most polished film of the season and the only one made without a shop to send you to. Waititi called it a story about a kid and her new best friend navigating the world with imagination alone, which is also a fair description of the Disney festive series as a whole. Crown verdict: a proper piece of family animation that happens to be an advert, and the series is now a genre of its own.

The best Christmas advert 2025: the top five

5. Sainsbury’s: The BFG and the Greedy Giant (2025)

Agency New Commercial Arts, director Sam Brown through Rogue Films, score by Chris White recorded at Abbey Road, launched 2 November, Kantar top ten.

Roald Dahl’s giant returned for a second year, now paired with a colleague called Annie and pitted against a Greedy Giant who eats the town’s Christmas dinners, until the pair restock every table from the Taste the Difference range. Sainsbury’s press release called it a Christmas caper movie, and it ends with Annie inviting the BFG to lunch. It sells the range without once stopping to say so. Crown verdict: the first Sainsbury’s Christmas franchise worth keeping, and the smartest licensed character since Kevin.

4. Asda: A Very Merry Grinchmas (2025)

Agency Lucky Generals, director Dexter Fletcher, launched 1 November in The 1% Club on ITV1, System1 5.9 stars, Kantar top ten.

Dr Seuss’s Grinch wanders into an Asda, where the prices, the party food and a singing, dancing staff turn a Christmas hater into a convert. Kantar found it was the only entirely new idea in its top ten, and Asda’s own research, that 70 per cent of families worry about the cost of Christmas, is the brief. A green misanthrope is a smarter way to say “we’re cheap” than a price board. Crown verdict: the best licensed-character advert of the year and the clearest example of a value message dressed as entertainment.

3. Aldi: Kevin and Katie’s wedding (2025)

Agency McCann Manchester, three parts: the proposal in early November, the stag and hen do on 7 November and the wedding on 27 November, System1 5.8 stars for The Proposal, Kantar top ten.

Kevin the Carrot’s tenth Christmas was a serial: he proposed to Katie, the stag do went pear-shaped, and the finale asked whether the couple would say I do, while Aldi sold “carrot gold” engagement rings and plush toys between episodes. Ten years in, the format is the innovation: Aldi made the country wait for the next chapter, which is what Waitrose did in 2024 and what everyone will do in 2026. Our decade review of Kevin has the full history. Crown verdict: the most valuable character in British retail, still getting funnier, and now with a wedding.

2. John Lewis: Where Love Lives (2025)

Agency Saatchi & Saatchi, director Jonathan Alric of The Blaze through Iconoclast, music Alison Limerick’s Where Love Lives reimagined by Labrinth, launched 4 November in The Great British Bake Off, not in Kantar’s top ten.

A grown-up son gives his father a vinyl copy of the 1990 house record, and it carries the father back to a dancefloor and forward through his son’s childhood. The line “If you can’t find the words, find the gift” is the best John Lewis has had since Man on the Moon, and the vinyl profits went to the Partnership’s Building Happier Futures programme for people who grew up in care. Kantar’s panel left it out of the top ten, which says more about the panel than the film. Crown verdict: a story about men who cannot say it, told through a house record, and the best of the Saatchi era so far.

1. Waitrose: The Perfect Gift (2025)

Agency Wonderhood Studios, director Molly Manners through Biscuit Filmworks, music James’s She’s a Star, four minutes, System1 5.9 stars, not in Kantar’s top ten.

Joe Wilkinson’s widower, Phil, meets Keira Knightley at the Waitrose cheese counter over a Sussex Charmer cheddar, and the rest is a romantic comedy with food as the love language. Waitrose called it an industry first, Richard Curtis was reported approving, and the length is the argument: Waitrose has decided it is a food entertainment brand and made something people would choose to watch. Missing Kantar’s top ten says something about what thirty-second testing can see. Crown verdict: the most ambitious format of Christmas 2025 and the first supermarket short that earns its running time, which is why it is the best Christmas advert of the year.

What Christmas 2025 tells you about Christmas 2026

Serials work. Aldi’s trilogy, Tesco’s vignettes and Waitrose’s short all treated the season as a schedule rather than a single premiere, and the research firms rewarded the ones with a character to anchor them. Repeats work too, as Amazon and Coca-Cola showed, though a re-run is a media decision rather than a creative one.

The testing panels also increasingly disagree with the critics. The two films at the top of this list were left out of Kantar’s top ten, while the second-placed advert in that ranking was a computer-generated remake of a thirty-year-old idea. Our playbook on how Christmas adverts get made explains why the November launch date is now the least important decision.

How we ranked these

Each campaign was scored on idea, craft, bravery, effectiveness and legs. Idea and bravery were weighted heaviest this year because 2025 was the year of the format experiment, and a four-minute rom-com or a three-part wedding deserves credit for the risk as well as the result. Effectiveness draws only on published System1 star ratings and Kantar’s reported rankings; where a brand made no claim, none is invented. Legs is a guess about which of these will be talked about in November 2026, and the list will be revised when that November arrives.

Frequently asked

What was the best Christmas advert of 2025?

By our ranking, Waitrose’s The Perfect Gift, the four-minute rom-com with Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson made by Wonderhood Studios. On research alone, Amazon’s Joy Ride topped System1’s star ratings and Cadbury’s Secret Santa topped Kantar’s effectiveness list, but both were re-runs.

What was the John Lewis Christmas advert 2025?

Where Love Lives, by Saatchi & Saatchi, in which a son gives his father a vinyl record and the music takes him back through their life together. Labrinth reimagined Alison Limerick’s 1990 house track and the film premiered on 4 November 2025.

Which Christmas adverts scored highest with System1 in 2025?

Seven adverts reached the top 5.9-star rating: Amazon’s Joy Ride, Waitrose’s The Perfect Gift, Coca-Cola’s Holidays Are Coming, Lego, Asda’s A Very Merry Grinchmas, Heathrow’s Must Be Love and M&S Food’s Traffic Jamming. System1 called it a record-breaking year.

Did Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot get married in 2025?

Yes. Aldi’s tenth Kevin campaign ran as a trilogy: a proposal to Katie in early November, a stag and hen do on 7 November and a wedding finale that aired on 27 November 2025.