In a bid to repeat the colorful splash it made during last year’s Super Bowl, Ferrara Candy-owned Nerds announced today that it has secured a spot in Super Bowl LX, which will air the night of February 8, 2026.
Long on enthusiasm but short on details, CEO Greg Guidotti said in a statement that Nerds will return to the Big Game “bigger and bolder” and will deliver a spot that is “next level.”
Last year’s ad starred Nigerian-American vocalist Shaboozey, whose work mixes elements of hip-hop with country music. At the time, the artist was still riding a popularity wave from his work on Beyoncé’s 2024 Cowboy Carter album and his monster hit A Bar Song (Tipsy), which has racked up nearly 306 million YouTube views as of this writing.
Front and center as he was in Nerds’ 2025 spot, Shaboozy was overshadowed—at least physically—by a two-story tall, CGI-generated Gummy who played a trumpet and ambled down the street amid a Mardi Gras-style procession. Shaboozy led the parade, singing his riff on the Louis Armstrong classic What a Wonderful World.
As the company explained when Gummy made his debut in its inaugural Super Bowl spot in 2024 (this one featuring TikTok star Addison Rae), the globular creature is “made in the likeness of the fan-favorite Nerds Gummy Clusters—an unexpected, one-of-a-kind product combination of crunchy and gummy.”
It’s not clear if Gummy will appear in the upcoming spot, but Ferrara has been clear on how Nerds Gummy Clusters opened the door for the sort of high-dollar spending it takes to be in the Super Bowl. In the span of just five years, Nerds Gummy Clusters turned Ferrara from a $50 million company to a $500 million one, fueling the decision “to show up in a big, bold way on the world’s biggest stage,” as Guidotti put it.
Privately-held Ferrara began making candy in Chicago in 1908. Its portfolio, which includes Now and Later, Chuckles, and Sweetarts has historically made it something of a backwater in the candy segment.
Nerds hit candy shelves in 1983, with Ferrara buying the brand from Nestlé in 2018. Ferrera’s R&D team began tinkering with the candy almost right away, finally arriving at Nerds Gummy Clusters, whose sales will no doubt bankroll the 2026 spot, as they have in 2024 and 2025.
The Super Bowl 60 ad tracker shows ongoing updates of the latest 2026 Big Game commercials.
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