Starbucks Turns the Coffee Run into an Olympic Epic for Milano Cortina 2026

As anticipation builds for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games Milano Cortina 2026 on Feb. 6th and the Big Game on Sunday, Feb. 8th, Starbucks has introduced a new ad campaign.

‘The Coffee Run’ ad, from Anomaly and directing duo Julian & Quentin, will debut during the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremonies with additional placements before and after the Big Game. 

Starbucks is the Official Coffee Partner of Team USA for the Winter Games, and the ad features Team USA Olympic and Paralympic athletes - including Amber Glenn, Elana Meyers Taylor, Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike.

‘The Coffee Run’ reimagines the familiar concept of a coffee run as an epic, cinematic, Olympic-scale journey. The film follows a man on a sweeping journey through a snowy mountain town, zipping through streets on a scooter greeting locals and dropping off Starbucks coffees to members of the Winter Games community and Team USA winter athletes.

Along the way, coffee is handed off to members of the extended Team USA community, including Olympic athletes and Paralympic athletes and the many people working behind the scenes to support them.

Set to a playful, a cappella–inspired track of Burt Bacharach's 'South American Getaway', the film builds in repetition and scale as the runner repeats the journey for one more coffee, ending with a final request at the top of a mountain before cutting to his return to Starbucks, welcomed by a knowing smile from a barista who recognises him.

Debuting during one of the busiest advertising moments of the year - Olympics and Super Bowl weekend - a deliberate point of distinction in this film is the analogue approach, crafted to feel cinematic rather than commercial, and leading with storytelling.

To honour the craft at the heart of The Coffee Run, the film was put through a film out process, transferring the 90-second film to physical film and back introduced texture, grain and imperfection that couldn’t be replicated digitally, grounding the work in the lineage of authentic Italian cinema and giving it a tactile, timeless quality.