Christmas ads 2026: the big brands came back with the same characters. That is the point.

On 1 November 2026 the UK Christmas advertising season opened properly. Tesco, Argos and Sainsbury's all launched on the same day, and Creative Boom's running round-up shows the pattern straight away: almost every big film brings back something its customers already know.

What did the big Christmas ads of 2026 do?

Sainsbury's is using Roald Dahl's Big Friendly Giant for the third year running, again with New Commercial Arts. This time the BFG has a cold and is stuck at home, until colleagues bring Christmas dinner to his cave. A real Sainsbury's colleague, Annie, returns for her second year in the story.

Argos brought back its toy mascots Connie and Trevor, who also starred in 2025. Retail Gazette reports that the film, by T&P, casts Richard Ayoade as a Scrooge figure, with Connie and Trevor as the ghosts walking him through Argos's past. Argos's head of campaigns said the aim was to build on last year's success while giving the established characters a fresh story. It all sits on "There's More to Argos", the brand platform Argos introduced in 2023. The 2025 ad won Christmas Advert of the Year at the Retail Gazette awards.

Tesco changed the format, not the promise. Marketing Week reports that "The Wrong Address", by BBH London, is one three-minute film about two old school friends reunited by a misdirected delivery, replacing last year's 11 short films. It is Tesco's first Christmas use of famous faces since 2019, but it is still built on "Every Little Helps".

What are people saying?

The talk so far is about familiarity. Creative Boom notes that two brands, Argos and Walmart in the US, have both reached for Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and Walmart has brought back the Muppets. Brit Brief sums up the early mood as festive and warm rather than tear-jerking. I have not seen reliable audience data for the 2026 films yet, and John Lewis, the advert many people wait for, had not launched by 1 November. Some will call all this playing it safe.

My take

This is opinion. It is not playing safe. It is how brands are built.

Every year a brand has a choice. Start again with a clever new idea, or add another chapter to something customers already recognise. Sainsbury's, Argos and Tesco chose the second. Each returning character is a shortcut in the customer's memory: the BFG means Sainsbury's before the logo appears. New money adds to old memories instead of buying fresh ones from scratch.

Byron Sharp's work on distinctive brand assets makes the same case, which I covered in my profile of how brands grow. The point for a founder is that you do not need a Christmas budget to use it. You need patience.

Most small brands fail here in the opposite direction. They get bored of their own colour, tagline or character long before customers have even noticed it, and they change it. Every change resets the memory to zero. Consistency is not dull. It is compound interest. Brands grow in loops, and a returning character is a loop.

Change the story every year. Keep the signals for a decade.

Three questions for your own brand this Christmas

• What would customers recognise with your name hidden? A colour, a phrase, a face, a sound. If the answer is nothing, choose one now and commit to it.
• What did you drop too early? Look at last year's posts. If something worked and you stopped using it because you were bored, bring it back.
• Is your seasonal campaign a new chapter or a new book? Keep the promise and the signals the same, and let only the story change.

This is the Construct and Connect work in the Brand Growth OS™, and it is why I argue that certainty is the brand and that brands grow in loops. The Brand Growth Audit™ shows which of your signals customers actually remember. For another take on keeping what works, read Starbucks and platforms, not peaks.

Sources

Marketing Week, 1 November 2026 · Retail Gazette, 1 November 2026 · Creative Boom, Christmas ads of 2026 (rolling) · Brit Brief, 1 November 2026. I could not open the brands' own press releases. Opinion in this piece is Mike Bruce's. See all brand voices · About Mike Bruce.