This paper introduces (graded) skew cellular algebras, which generalise Graham and Lehrer’s cellular algebras. We show that all of the main results from the theory of cellular algebras extend to skew cellular algebras and we develop a “cellular algebra Clifford theory” for the skew cellular algebras that arise as fixed point subalgebras of cellular algebras. As an application of this general theory, the main result of this paper proves that the Hecke algebras of type $G(\ell,p,n)$ are graded skew cellular algebras. In the special case when $p = 2$ this implies that the Hecke algebras of type $G(\ell,2,n)$ are graded cellular algebras. The proof of all of these results rely, in a crucial way, on the diagrammatic Cherednik algebras of Webster and Bowman. Our main theorem extends Geck’s result that the one parameter Iwahori-Hecke algebras are cellular algebras in two ways. First, our result applies to all cyclotomic Hecke algebras in the infinite series in the Shephard-Todd classification of complex reflection groups. Secondly, we lift cellularity to the graded setting. As applications of our main theorem, we show that the graded decomposition matrices of the Hecke algebras of type $G(\ell,p,n)$ are unitriangular, we construct and classify their graded simple modules and we prove the existence of “adjustment matrices” in positive characteristic.