The short version: Tesco made the best film, Thatchers made the best animation, Sainsbury's made the one your kids will ask to see again, and John Lewis made the one everybody is arguing about. That is the first week of Christmas adverts 2026, and it has been a strange, crowded week.
Christmas adverts used to arrive one at a time, politely spaced out across November so each could have its moment. This year ten of them landed between Sunday 1 November and Tuesday 3 November, which is roughly the rhythm of a film festival, so we have treated them like one. Below are the first-week verdicts. The full running list, with what is still to come, is on our Christmas adverts 2026 page.
John Lewis: Gloria and Pickles
The plot: a grandmother (Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) is about to give up on presents and put cash in cards, until Pickles, a pull-along toy dog from her own childhood voiced by Paul Whitehouse, comes to life, scolds her, and flies her across London in a tuk-tuk. On Christmas morning the envelopes hold a key to a disco-ball Gran Cave. Sam Fender covers The Rolling Stones.
As a film it is the most John Lewis thing John Lewis has made in years, and that is a deliberate choice. After two Christmases of quieter, more grown-up stories about families and houses, this is a mascot adventure with a flight over the city, a stop outside the shop and a toy on the shelves. Monty had a penguin, Buster had a trampoline, Gloria has a vintage Fisher-Price dog. The tuk-tuk sequence is handsome and the Gran Cave payoff is a lovely image. Scott Thomas plays the whole thing straight, which is why it works.
The argument is about the grandchildren, who open the film glued to their screens and underwhelmed by Gloria's old toys. A loud corner of social media has decided they are brats and the advert is a shop window with a story draped over it. We think that misses what the film is doing: the kids are the problem Gloria solves, not the point of view, and the advert is honest about the fact that it would quite like you to buy a pull-along dog. John Lewis says it is happy to have the debate. So are we.
The song is the trump card. Fender's version, with a school choir from North Shields and a colliery brass band, is the first John Lewis soundtrack in a while that sounds like a record rather than a lullaby, and it is out as a single with the profits going to charity. Our page on the advert has the credits and the recording.
Verdict: a confident return to the formula, with the best John Lewis song since Elton. Festive Factor high, argument factor higher.
Tesco: The Wrong Address
The plot: Lizzie's Christmas food order goes to the house she moved out of, hundreds of miles away. The driver, Polly, is an old school friend. The van breaks down, the handover becomes a road trip, and two women who stopped speaking years ago finally say why.
This is the one that behaves most like an actual film. Three minutes, one story, two proper actors (Roisin Conaty and Anna Maxwell Martin) and a director, Steve Rogers, who lets scenes breathe rather than cutting to the next product. The Police on the soundtrack is a warm, slightly unexpected choice that suits a story about something magic happening by accident. It premiered on ITV on 1 November in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which tells you how seriously Tesco is taking it.
Verdict: the best-made advert of the week and the one we would watch again for pleasure. If it were a film we would call it Christmas Adjacent and mean it kindly: the friendship is the story, Christmas is the setting.
Sainsbury's: the BFG, year three
The plot: the BFG has a cold and is going to miss Christmas, so Annie, a real Sainsbury's colleague back for a second year, drives a van of food into Giant Country with her sidekick Fred. A greedy giant ambushes them, the van ends up hanging off a cliff, and an avalanche of sprouts saves the day.
Third year of the BFG and the format has settled into something that feels like an annual Roald Dahl short. The giant-country action is bigger than before, the sprout avalanche is a proper laugh, and Annie remains the most likeable human in any supermarket advert. It is also the advert that drew the most complaints that 1 November is too early, which, if anything, suggests people were paying attention.
Verdict: the family pick. Essential for anyone under ten. We have the whole lineage, from 1914 to Mog, in Sainsbury's Christmas adverts through the years.
Thatchers: Saving Tasting Time
The plot: snow cuts off a Somerset cider farm on tasting day, and a puppet Martin Thatcher takes a hot-air balloon to collect the scattered tasting team, with Myrtle the dog supplying the idea.
We are a Christmas film site, so forgive us for getting excited about an advert for cider. This is Aardman, made in Bristol, in stop motion, with a miniature snow-covered farm and hand-stitched costumes, and it is the first Christmas TV advert the brand has ever made. The storytelling is simple and the craft is anything but. It is on the same shelf as Aardman's Christmas work for Barbour, and it premiered the day before John Lewis without anybody much noticing, which is a shame.
Verdict: the animation of the week. Nothing in it is aimed at children, which is as it should be for the product, but any grown-up who loves The Wrong Trousers will want to see it. Credits and the film.
Argos: Tales of Argos Past
The plot: Richard Ayoade is stuck in the past, still circling toys in the old Argos catalogue, until mascots Connie and Trevor appear as Christmas ghosts and show him what the shop sells now.
A Christmas Carol gets riffed on every single year, and this is one of the better riffs because it understands that the catalogue is a genuine object of nostalgia for anyone who grew up in Britain. Ayoade is the right amount of deadpan and the posters, pairing a Mr Frosty with a slush machine and a Game Boy with a Switch, are the sharpest idea in the campaign. Sixty seconds, no song to speak of, no attempt at tears.
Verdict: a good joke told well. It earns a footnote in our ranking of every A Christmas Carol film, somewhere below the Muppets.
The rest of the week, quickly
Lidl put Shaun Williamson, Barry from EastEnders for ever, in front of a Slade rework with Chris Kamara reacting to pigs in blankets. It is a knees-up, not a film, and it knows it. Asda went the other way entirely, four thirty-second spots that escalate a tidy festive scene into a party to a remix of Martin Garrix, with the word BOOM as the whole script; loud, cheap-and-cheerful on purpose, and probably exactly what Asda shoppers want after last year's Grinch. Very's new flamingo family is pleasant, thirty seconds of dream worlds inside the Very cube, and notable mainly because Very said out loud that it used AI-assisted production alongside the CGI. Debenhams, out since mid-October, is a four-minute village rom-com with Emily Atack and Mathew Horne and Gabrielle singing in the pub. Sports Direct's Nike film is Erling Haaland helping an uncle buy boots. Shelter's winter appeal is the one that will stay with you, a countdown that turns out not to be to Christmas at all.
What the week tells us
Three things. Nostalgia is the house style this year: a vintage toy, the Argos catalogue, a third year of the BFG, a Slade song, a Rolling Stones song. Mascots are back, after a few years when the big retailers preferred ordinary families. And the TV premiere has become an event in itself, with Tesco in Millionaire, John Lewis in Coronation Street and Bake Off, and Aldi lining up a Gogglebox ad-break takeover for Kevin the Carrot's full film.
The thing we are watching for is whether anyone this year makes an advert that is simply a good short film without a mascot, a catalogue or a cover version. Tesco came closest. We would like one more.
What we are waiting for
Aldi's full Kevin film, which the teaser says involves a missing Cauli Dog. M&S, with Lucy Punch, expected this week. Waitrose, which launched in the second week of November last year and is the biggest search of the season after John Lewis. Morrisons, Boots, Amazon, and whatever Coca-Cola decides to do with the trucks now the public has voted on where they stop. We will add verdicts to this piece as they land, and the 2026 running list will always be the quickest way to see what is out.
Our Festive Factor and Cosiness scores are for films, not adverts, so none of the above carries a number. Take the verdicts as what they are: the opinions of people who watch a lot of Christmas films, and are quite pleased the adverts are trying to be some.
