Does stress, particularly life-threatening stress have an impact on people’s ability to think creatively? And how does it affect fluency, flexibility and originality of ideas? Previous research has reported mixed findings on the relationship of stress and creative thinking. While some studies showed negative effects of stress on cognitive flexibility, a key component of creative thinking, other empirical findings suggest that challenging and adverse experiences can catalyze ideation and generation of innovative solutions thus strengthening originality of ideas. The study further builds on theoretical models including creativity as an adaptation and survival pathway, proposing that moderate stress may enhance certain aspects of creative performance, while excessive stress may hinder it. In this study, we investigate the effect of war-related stress on creative thinking in young adults. Using an online survey, we investigate three groups - Ukrainians in Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees in Germany, and Germans. To assess creative thinking performance, we use the Droodle Creativity Task and the Alternate Uses Task to investigate fluency, originality, and flexibility of ideas. In addition, we ask for self-reports of stress and post-traumatic symptoms (during the last month), as well as anxiety and depression in order to distinguish different levels. In our analysis, we are using these self-reports as predictors for creative performance. This work aims to clarify how war-related stress influences creative thinking performance, particularly originality, flexibility, and fluency of ideas and with that contributing to the broader understanding of creativity in crisis.