Last year’s Super Bowl was crowned fashion’s biggest ever — but 2026 is raising the bar even further.
After brands from Bode to Willy Chavarria saw smash success on the US’s biggest stage in 2025, more brands are looking to cash in by taking advantage of the Big Game’s enormous audience — one which is becoming younger and more female, thanks in part to celebrity WAGs like Taylor Swift and Olivia Culpo.
Tecovas, Oakley and E.l.f. are among the fashion and beauty labels running ads. On the ground in San Francisco, Thom Browne will show his fall collection at the second annual GQ Bowl fashion show on Friday and Abercrombie is hosting a presentation as the NFL’s official fashion partner on Saturday. And with the event set in its namesake stadium, Levi’s is staging a “home turf” takeover that includes music performances, customisation workshops and product collaborations with brands including Jordan sneakers. Creator platform LTK will also have more than 140 influencers creating content across events.
As the Super Bowl has entered the streaming era — this year it will air on NBC’s Peacock — brands have more flexible advertising opportunities, too. Previously only available to those with budgets big enough to shell out millions of dollars (this year’s going rate for a 30-second ad is $10 million, according to Bloomberg) — often a collection of beer, car and tech companies — more fashion and beauty brands are running a mix of local and national linear and streaming buys, offering a more affordable way to reach key audiences, including younger consumers.
For fashion and beauty, the challenge this year isn’t finding a way to participate, but standing out.
Those with on-screen ads are airing sentimental or comedic spots meant to entertain viewers — Tecovas leaned into cinematic emotion with sweeping scenes of cowboys in Texas, while E.l.f. embraced its sense of humour with a telenovela starring Melissa McCarthy. The on-the-ground moments, meanwhile, are designed to engage consumers in person during the biggest sports tourism event in the US and thrive online too.
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As the sports and fashion industries get closer, with athletes going from serving as brand ambassadors to co-designing collections to walking the runway, the Super Bowl presents the ultimate opportunity to tap that power. And the potential payoff is big: This year’s Super Bowl audience is set to be more varied than ever, with more newfound football followers as well as fans of halftime act Bad Bunny.
Thankfully for marketers, they’re well acquainted with being forced to stand out in a crowded landscape.
“Even though this is the biggest moment, the stage is noisy all year round for consumers,” said Carley Caldas, senior vice president of marketing and creative at beauty brand Eos.
The Biggest Brand-Building Stage
For brands in the midst of a growth spurt, rebrand or new product launch, the Super Bowl is about as good as it gets when it comes to getting a commercial in front of a broad audience.
“There’s no other point in the year where there’s this collective [excitement] to view ads as well as the content,” said Caldas.
Tecovas, for instance, opened more than 50 new stores in 2025 — many of which are in “non-traditionally Western markets,” like New York and Boston, according to Tecovas’ vice president of brand marketing, Samantha Fodrowski — and wanted to run a spot on Peacock to help build its brand nationally. The team knew the Super Bowl would be a fit after it saw ads it ran during NFL games, college football and more drove immediate spikes in traffic to its website.
Body care brand Tree Hut also decided to stream a spot during the Super Bowl after growing its $40 million business to $400 million in four years, largely through creator content on social media. Following a rebrand in December, the 23-year-old company decided to present its new image to the US with the hope of growing awareness, which currently sits at 24 percent of the market.
The commercial is a case study in using an unexpected moment to hook the audience: It playfully subverts “clean girl” aesthetics by showcasing rows of creators, including Paul Fino and Lisi German, partaking in a robotic self-care routine in a lab-like setting, until one suddenly flings a handful of the brand’s colourful body scrub at the wall, setting off a chain reaction in the room.
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For other brands, a new product launch can be a way to get new and existing customers alike interested. After a 2025 Super Bowl campaign highlighting Eos’s expansion into body wash — which drove a 30 percent lift of in-store sales in the weeks following the game — the company decided to take the same approach this year for a body mist launch.
Its ad was designed based on feedback that the brand’s products smell “good enough to eat,” with scents like vanilla cashmere and creme de pistache. Similarly to Tree Hut, it leaned on unexpected humour by riffing on TV show “Is It Cake?”, in which contestants must guess if an item is a piece of cake before slicing into it. In the ad, the “item” in question is a person wearing an Eos body mist, leaning not only into subversive humour but also tapping the senses.
E.l.f., meanwhile, is using its Big Game ad to spotlight its bestselling Glow Reviver Lip Oil, seeing it as an opportunity to connect with its Hispanic customer base, according to global chief marketing officer Kory Marchisotto. Featuring actors Melissa McCarthy, Nicholas Gonzalez and Itatí Cantoral, the telenovela-style ad shows McCarthy trying to learn Spanish for the “biggest reggaeton concert in America” — a nod to Bad Bunny’s halftime show — after a coma, using the brand’s lip oil to better roll her Rs. In addition to Peacock, the spot will air on Univision in Mexico.
Cutting Through the Noise
For fashion brands activating on the ground, working closely with the athletes is a way to set themselves apart.
GQ, for instance, specifically selected Thom Browne for his personal connection to the sport — he has infused football themes in his collections over the years and is also artist-in-residence for college football powerhouse the University of Notre Dame — but also because the athletes themselves are excited about the brand.
“Every Sunday, you see NFL players wearing Thom Browne,” said Will Welch, GQ’s outgoing editor-in-chief. “I wanted it to be a designer and an event that the players would be dying to attend.”
Not only will the athletes be on the red carpet and runway themselves, but they have also been involved in the lead-up to the event: A teaser for the GQ Bowl stars New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs alongside Gigi Hadid, both kitted out in Thom Browne suiting.
Abercrombie, too, has worked closely with the NFL since 2023, outfitting players for their tunnel walks and collaborating on design with players like CeeDee Lamb, according to chief marketing officer Carey Collins Krug. The brand will also be hosting a Super Bowl fashion presentation starring football players and WAGs alike in a mix of contemporary and archival pieces, including Abercrombie items from the 1940s, to highlight its sporty American heritage. Among those expected to appear in the presentation include high-profile WAGs like Olivia Culpo and Allison Kuch, as well as NFL players including Christian McCaffrey and Tee Higgins. The retailer will also be sharing content throughout the weekend, from behind-the-scenes styling moments to snaps from invited influencers throughout the weekend.
It’s not necessarily over-the-top spectacle that’s best positioned to cut through the noise, but stories anchored with a human connection — whether by collaborating with a player on a collection or applying customer feedback to an ad’s creative. As long as each brand leans into their unique connection to the day, whether that’s Americana or the intersection of fashion and sport — like Oakley and Meta’s athlete-fronted glasses ad, titled “Athletic Intelligence” — there is space to stand out.
“The Super Bowl is such a big event that there’s room for different brands to get in there and do their thing,” said Welch.
