Chelsea FC launches 2026 Christmas campaign as a TV-style network

By Nathan Brooks

Chelsea FC’s 2026 Christmas campaign turns the club into a TV-style network; since the first festive campaign in 2024, Chelsea has granted more than £280,000.

TILL DAWN created the campaign. ICONIC devised the strategy. “That’s Proper Chels” takes the form of a full television schedule: weather, phone-ins (listener questions by phone), home shopping and ad breaks (commercial breaks). Each component sells the club’s Christmas range.

The club bills it as the first festive campaign viewers can “channel-hop” across. That claim remains unproven. Chelsea discloses no viewing figures, sales target, campaign budget or comparison with other campaigns.

What does the campaign actually include?

The release sequence starts with outtakes. These show the footage most other Christmas campaigns leave out.

Fourth-wall breaks (performers acknowledging the camera), asides, players deliberately breaking character (corpsing) and behind-the-scenes footage fill those early posts. The full programme arrives at the end. Fans have spent several days inside the campaign by then.

Each glimpse functions as an activation (a scheduled campaign feature). It pulls fans into another element as Christmas stretches across several days, not one.

The schedule gives each strand a named host. Jolie Sharpe sells the festive range in a QVC-style television home-shopping format. Jason Cundy runs a sports-radio phone-in as himself.

João Pedro answers supporters in “Ask João.” Cole Palmer presents the weather, as cold as ever. Palmer and Morgan Rogers then face each other in Christmas jumpers as their friendly rivalry reaches a breaking point.

Slots also go to players from Chelsea’s men’s and women’s squads: Levi Colwill, Katie McCabe, Australian player Ellie Carpenter and Alyssa Thompson. The casting makes this a club-wide seasonal platform. With so many recurring faces, each format must earn attention. The announcement offers no audience data yet.

Where does the money go?

A percentage of festive-range sales will go to Chelsea Foundation and its charity partners. Their stated work addresses loneliness and social isolation in London and surrounding communities.

Since the festive campaign began in 2024, Chelsea says it has granted more than £280,000 to organisations tackling loneliness and homelessness across southwest London and Surrey.

Supporters gave more than 3,200 presents to people in need last Christmas. The announcement does not disclose the donation percentage, charity-partner names, organisation count or measured outcomes. The grant figure records money awarded, but it does not show how many people received sustained support.

Scott Fenton, Chelsea FC, said:

“That’s Proper Chels celebrates the nostalgia, humour and community spirit that make Chelsea unique at Christmas. While the campaign is designed to entertain supporters, it also has a meaningful purpose at its heart.

Through Chelsea Foundation and its charity partners, we’re proud to once again support people experiencing loneliness and social isolation, harnessing the power of the Chelsea community to make a difference during the festive season.”

Fenton did not provide the donation rate or a schedule for the partnership.

How does the agency approach work?

ICONIC founder James Kirkham said:

“Fans watch football flicking between clips, streams, reactions and live shopping within the same phone, so this Christmas Chelsea broadcasts everywhere all at once.

You find it in pieces, channel-hop your way through a different clip or show on every platform, and it brings back that can’t-wait wanting of circling the Christmas catalogue – before it all turned into cardboard boxes on the doorstep.”

The release does not list the platforms, publish a full schedule or quantify reach.

TILL DAWN founder Craig Stronach said the team shot it as a live network with every camera rolling. He treated the corpsing, asides and looks toward the assistant director (AD) as part of the show. Fans would see those moments first, followed by a flood of channels and then the full programme.

He said the digital approach complemented a catalogue-like craft photographic style in which premium met nostalgia. He also linked that look to a certain sense of Chelsea cultural cool. The announcement gives no production budget, production scale or exact release timetable.

What happened before, and what remains unproven?

“That’s Proper Chels” is Chelsea’s third campaign with TILL DAWN and ICONIC. It follows the multi-award-winning “London, It’s Our House,” which won a Gold Clio Sports award. It also follows “Can’t Tame Us,” which showed Gymskin and Madonna dancing in a “leaked” Chelsea kit this spring.

The partnership gives the agencies a recognisable body of work. It does not prove this campaign will outperform earlier work. Chelsea supplies no sales, viewing or earned-media results.

The Christmas range is available now at the Chelsea Megastore and on chelseafc.com. For marketing leaders, the test is whether the multi-show, multi-platform format can convert attention into range sales while sustaining the charity message. Chelsea has supplied the format and funding totals. It has not supplied the audience, sales or outcome data needed to answer that question.