Kim Taehyung Trades the Red Carpet for the Reverse Weave in Champion’s Newest Global Campaign

Champion has a new face, and for once it isn’t wearing couture. BTS’ V just became the sportswear brand’s latest global ambassador.

On August 7, 2026, Champion‘s official accounts, include Champion USA and Champion Japan, post a short teaser with no name attached to it. The clip cut between a hand resting on a trumpet, someone adjust the collar of a garment, and a vinyl record spinning with the Champion “C” at its center. The only text was a date: 08.10.26. Fans identified V sitting on a bed partway through the footage almost immediately, and the guessing game was over before Champion said a word officially.

Close-up portrait of a person in a navy Champion hoodie wearing white wired earphones, with the embroidered Champion logo view on the sleeve.

Three days later the brand confirmed it outright. Champion, founded in Rochester, New York in 1919 and now owned by Authentic Brands Group, named V, born Kim Taehyung of BTS, as a global ambassador for its fall campaign, “True Champion.” The rollout landed on a Monday, timed the way these things usually are, with a press statement from Authentic and a matching wave of social posts from Champion’s regional accounts.

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Stefani Fleurant, executive vice president of marketing, sport and lifestyle at Authentic Brands Group, frame the campaign as a statement about the brand’s direction rather than a single celebrity booking. “True Champion represents a new chapter for Champion and the values that continue to define our brand,” she said, describing V’s “creative vision, global influence and genuine connection with his audience” as reasons he fit the roster.

He isn’t there alone. Champion built the campaign around a wider group that includes Romeo Beckham, Sofi Tukker, Kyle Kuzma, Danna Paola, Megan Keller, Bella Sims and Jaalen Best, mix musicians, athletes and models rather than leaning on one marquee name. V’s own comments, given to GQ alongside the campaign launch, stayed close to that theme. “To me, being a ‘True Champion’ isn’t about trying to become someone special,” he said. “Just don’t try too hard to be someone else. I think the more you stay true to yourself, the more confident you’ll become.”

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Champion is a different kind of stop for V, and that gap is part of what makes the pairing notable. He has spent the past year deep in haute territory, holding long-running partners with Celine and Cartier, sitting beside Anna Wintour at Celine’s Spring 2026 show in Paris, and wearing custom Celine on the Arirang world tour. He also carries ambassador roles outside fashion entirely, including Korean beauty label TIRTIR and Japanese skincare brand Yunth.

Champion sits at the other end of that spectrum by design. It is a company built on sweatshirts, hoodies and the reverse weave construction that made it a staple of American collegiate athletics long before streetwear turned heritage sportswear into something people paid attention to. Where Celine trades on Parisian tailor and Cartier on gen jewelry craft, Champion’s whole show rests on the opposite instinct: durable basics that were never designed to be precious. V, for his part, has said the label is closer to what he actual reaches for off duty than the red carpet pieces that usually get photographed. Following his return from mandatory military service in 2025, he called the Champion role “perfectly in line” with where his life is now, and described the partner itself as “a natural fit.”

That framematters for a wardrobe as visible as his. Ambassadorships tend to cluster around a single lane, whether that’s luxury fashion or K-beauty, and V’s roster has instead spread sideways into categories that don’t obviously talk to one another. TIRTIR gave him a foothold in Korean cosmetics, Yunth extended that into Japanese skincare, and Celine and Cartier kept him anchored in European haute houses. Champion adds something none of those relationships cover: a mass-market American label with a century of athletic heritage behind it, aimed at a far wider, far more casual customer than a runway show ever reaches.

 

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The signing didn’t come out of nowhere. Jamie Salter, founder and executive chairman of Authentic Brands Group, which bought Champion from HanesBrands for $1.2 billion in 2025, ran into V at the World Cup finals at MetLife Stadium last month. A photo of the two of them together made its way onto Salter’s Instagram and, in hindsight, read as a preview of exactly this announcement.

The timing also lines up with a strong year for BTS as a group. Their fifth studio album, Arirang, opened at number one on the Billboard 200 in March, and the accompanying Arirang World Tour has been selling out stadiums since. V’s solo catalog has kept pace on its own terms: his 2023 album Layover debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, and in 2024 he released a duet version of “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby. He has also carried a separate public role as an honorary tourism ambassador for the city of Seoul, a campaign that reportedly crossed 500 million combined views on YouTube within three weeks of release. None of that overlaps directly with sportswear, which is precisely why Champion’s bet reads less like a straightforward celebrity endorsement and more like an attempt to borrow some of that cultural gravity for a brand trying to hold its own identity under new ownership.

That ownership context is part of the story too. Authentic Brands Group bought Champion from HanesBrands for $1.2 billion in 2025, taking on a brand whose name recognition has always outpaced its cultural relevance in recent years. A campaign built around a mixed cast of athletes, musicians and actors, fronted publicly by someone with V’s reach, is as much a signal to the market as it is a marketing asset. It tells retailers and licensing partners that Champion intends to compete for cultural attention again, not just shelf space.

The True Champion campaign launched globally the Monday following the announcement, running across Champion’s markets in the United States, Japan and beyond, with the full visual rollout following the teaser’s black and white, faceless build up. Champion has not disclosed how long the ambassadorship runs or whether it extends into a dedicated product collaboration beyond the campaign imagery itself, and no such detail has surfaced from either side as of publication.