Roadmap to Success

2025 was another successful year for adidas. The brand’s growth broadened significantly across product divisions, categories, markets, and channels, and the company’s profitability continued to improve strongly. Not only did we deliver results that exceeded our initial expectations despite a challenging external backdrop, we also made adidas a better company during 2025: We have continued to drive brand heat with an even stronger emphasis on locally relevant products and activations, further improved our product range and market-led go-to-market approach, strengthened partnerships with both our retail and brand partners, and simplified the way we work. With this, we laid the foundation for continued success in the years ahead.

We have continued to strengthen our brand and our business in several ways:

• Global brand with a local mindset: We need to be where our consumers are. With more local trends emerging, the need for local relevance continues to increase. Instead of a centrally defined one-size-fits-all approach, we have empowered our markets to create the product, storytelling, partnerships, and distribution they need to be successful. By providing our markets with decision-making autonomy, we can meet the expectations of our customers and the needs of our consumers around the world.

• Speed and agility: Fast-changing trends and consumer demands require flexibility and agility. We have empowered our market teams to accelerate decision-making and have begun to eliminate complicated processes to react quickly. We will continue to prioritize speed and agility to respond faster to the needs of our consumers and the feedback from our retail partners.

• Healthy balance between channels: We have transitioned from a narrow focus on our direct-to-consumer business to a service-oriented model toward our retail partners. By listening closely to their bottom-up feedback from the various markets and acting on it in a locally relevant way, we have proven our desire to be a trusted partner for them. And while wholesale is crucial for our future success, we continue to invest in our own retail and e-commerce presence, which is also tailored to specific market needs. It is all about maintaining a healthy balance between our channels to win with the consumer.

• Brand heat: We are proud to produce groundbreaking innovation in sports and some of the most sought-after product in Lifestyle, amplified by brand heat – and vice versa. Brand heat is the sum of everything we do. It comprises athletes, teams, celebrities, street culture, and more. With this in mind, we have entered and extended partnerships with some of the greatest teams and athletes in global sports like football, running, training, and basketball. At the same time, we have also welcomed countless local partners to our brand who are pushing boundaries in smaller sports, including winter sports, track and field, rugby, and tennis. And while we are equally proud of our cultural partnerships, we will remain deeply rooted in sport.

• Brand message on the joy of sport: To complement our strong product offering and drive brand heat holistically, we have created a new brand narrative – ‘You Got This.’ By putting the joy of sport and its power as a great unifier at the center, we want to counteract an atmosphere of pressure and stress, especially for our younger consumers. We will continue to activate this message globally – amplifying it through major sports events such as the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2026, together with many of our brand partners – and continue to evolve the narrative.

In addition, we have five foundational pillars that guide us:

• People: We believe that our people are the key to the company’s success. We focus on creating a culture that strengthens their performance, well-being, and personal development. This will have a significant impact on brand heat, consumer and customer satisfaction, and, ultimately, our results.

• Product: Product is key. We innovate in materials, designs, and technologies to constantly bring exciting new products to the market. This allows us to be relevant to consumers across our markets, both in Performance and Lifestyle, and to keep growing our deep archive of sportswear icons.

• Consumers: Our consumers are at the heart of everything we do. We focus on what matters to them, creating the product they want, offering the service they expect, and providing the experience they need.

• Retail partners: We need to be the best service partner for retailers. Multi-branded environments reach consumers at scale, and we can leverage our strong product pipeline through broad distribution.

• Athletes: Whether the crowd watching is large or small, we are here for all athletes. For more than 75 years, we have been innovating for sports and striving to create only the best for the athlete. This is in our DNA and has shaped our rich heritage. It is where we come from and where we need to be.