While the literature has extensively analysed the impact of policy-related and other exogenous shocks on banks’ economic performance, less empirical evidence has been produced on whether innovative digital-first banks and traditional banks exhibit different resilience when facing such crises. This study addresses this gap by analysing the effects of two recent, significant, and markedly different, shocks on a sample of European digital and traditional banks: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. Both events affected banks through multiple channels, including profitability pressures, credit risk dynamics, funding conditions, and heightened uncertainty. The research constructs a bank-year panel dataset for the period 2018–2023, based on publicly available annual reports and financial statements.