Adidas Football has emerged as one of the surprise breakout performers in Kolsquare’s latest Top 100 Fashion Brands on Instagram UK ranking for Q4 2025, climbing 48 places to secure second position, showing that targeted, high-engagement influencer strategies can outperform scale.
The sportswear brand generated around £27.8m in Earned Media Value (EMV) from 442 social media posts and just 191 influencers, delivering a standout 5.9% engagement rate. By comparison, UK number one Zara drove roughly £28.2m EMV with 10,732 posts from 3,217 influencers and a lower 3.8% engagement rate, underscoring how quality engagement and community alignment are reshaping brand performance.
Alongside high-profile partnerships with Stormzy and Jude Bellingham through The Original Icon campaign, Adidas Football has also activated a broad network of football creators and fan communities, encouraging consumer-generated content ranging from matchday moments to freestyle skills.
“Adidas Football’s performance shows you don’t need thousands of creators to win attention – relevance beats volume every time. By combining cultural icons with grassroots football communities, the brand has built a genuine connection, and that’s what’s driving engagement,” says Quentin Bordage, CEO and founder of Kolsquare.
Adidas UK, which rose 20 places to reach number 18 in the rankings, has also announced a forthcoming limited footwear collaboration with Molly-Mae in 2026. The brand worked with 1,024 influencers in 2025 and secured EMV of more than £6m.
Engagement trumps reach
Victoria’s Secret was another notable performer, with social media posts getting an impressive 8.9% engagement rate, which is more than double Zara’s, across 765 posts from 416 influencers, generating around £4.86m EMV. The lingerie and swimwear brand may not be in the overall top 20 yet, but its engagement impact signals a strong pull with highly involved audiences compared with bigger category peers.
Last year’s UK breakout is now making waves in Europe
One of the most dramatic success stories comes from In Print We Trust. This London-based sustainable fashion label ranked in the UK last year thanks to a highly engaged, community-driven influencer strategy (fashioncapital.co.uk).
In the latest Europe-wide rankings, it achieved the biggest leap of any brand, rising 1,226 places to number 95, proving that relevance and resonance with niche communities can push smaller players up the rankings. Despite working with just 38 influencers across 96 social posts, the brand generated an estimated £4.8m EMV with an extraordinary 41.3% engagement rate.
On TikTok, the brand did even better, rising 65 places in the UK to reach the top 10 at number nine with an EMV of £2,7m from 32 influencers who achieved a solid 15.2% engagement rate between them.
Performance wear surges
Also making notable progress in the UK was ThruDark, the British performance wear label inspired by tactical and military-grade design, climbing 243 places to number 94. The brand delivered approximately £1.54m EMV, powered by 789 posts from 152 creators with a strong 6.0% engagement rate, illustrating a growing appetite for functional fashion narratives that speak to purpose as well as style.
TikTok topped by Primark
On TikTok, Primark took the top spot with an EMV of £15.7m with 935 influencers securing an impressive 11.4% engagement rate. Gymshark climbed seven spaces to rank second with an EMV of £6.1m with 219 influencers. Their win was more down to scale than anything else, as engagement was just 3.9%.
Aspinal of London was a surprise contender, rising 275 spots to get to number 18 and achieving a phenomenal engagement rate of 68.9% with just six influencers.
Victoria’s Secret went up 17 places to rank 12th with an EMV of £2.3m, and Adidas UK went down one place to number 15.
Click here for the Instagram report
Click here for the TikTok report
Scale still matters, but strategy matters more
At the very top, fast-fashion heavyweights continue to dominate through volume: Zara, ASOS, Primark and H&M lead thanks to thousands of creators and posts. But Adidas Football’s rise on Instagram, Victoria’s Secret’s standout engagement, and the breakthrough performances by In Print We Trust and ThruDark point to a more nuanced influencer landscape where high-quality engagements and community alignment drive meaningful conversations and media value.
The rankings are based on Kolsquare’s analysis of over 1.5 million Instagram posts and 545,000 creator profiles, measuring brand performance through EMV, engagement and KOL activity between October and December 2025.
