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The countdown to Christmas is approaching rapidly, and that means one thing: Advent calendars. Whether it’s for an excitable four-year-old or a beer-loving adult, there’s an Advent calendar for pretty much everyone.
But how do you know what’s worth splashing out on, and what’s not worth the money? We’ve tested, tasted and played with 26 Advent calendars to rate them for you. Whether it’s whisky or Squishmallows, here are our verdicts.
The best UK Advent calendars for 2025
Food
Tracklements
This 12-door calendar is designed for the, you’ve guessed it, 12 days of Christmas. Tracklements makes excellent versions of everyday condiments such as wholegrain mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup. And while opening those doors may not feel especially festive, having a variety of sauces to pep up your Christmas leftovers will be incredibly welcome.
There are a few more special sauces, such as sweet mustard ketchup and apricot and ginger chutney, and everything comes in adorable teeny tiny glass jars. Tracklements is a certified B Corp, too. Plus, the calendar itself is made from FSC-certified cardboard, making all the packaging fully recyclable. Monica Horridge
Walkers shortbread
The shortbread in this Walkers calendar is undeniably tasty – buttery, with a nice crunch – and comes in various shapes and finishes, from chocolate-chip rounds and salted-caramel squares to plain shortbreads. The calendar is festive, with playful line illustrations of bakers in Christmas hats and lots of red tartan.
Each biscuit is individually wrapped in plastic, which is recyclable at supermarkets, and you can recycle the cardboard sleeve and plastic inner at home. If you love shortbread, or have a sweet tooth, this calendar is a delicious daily treat, but at £20, it’s not quite special enough to justify the cost. Hannah Booth
Candy Kittens
Beautifully packaged in striking neon colours, the Candy Kittens calendar provides two to four sweets behind each door. You’ll also find a cute message suggesting a different act of kindness, such as “donate a warm coat or blanket” and the perhaps more cloying, “tell a retail worker they’re sleighing it”. There’s a mix of fizzy and foam gummy sweets in many flavours, from Eton mess to sour apple – watermelon was my favourite.
It’s a shame that the sweets are packaged in fairly cheap-looking plastic wrappers, but these can be recycled with other soft plastics at specialist recycling points. Overall, it’s a delightfully sweet (and vegan) alternative to classic chocolate calendars that I could see being a big hit with teens. Lily Smith
Idahoan instant mash
This 12-day mash calendar (yes, you heard me correctly) contains packets and “on the go” pots of instant mash in seven flavours that just need boiling water added. I tried bubble and squeak first and, though my expectations weren’t high, I was disappointed – a few flecks of chewy carrot added some flavour, but it was artificially sweet. But I was pleasantly surprised by the butter and herb, which had a more tangy taste from herbs – the flavours were still quite subtle, but not bad for instant mash. My favourite was the bacon cheese; it had a good cheesy taste that wasn’t overpowering, and the bacon bits, though a little hard, added some salty umami.
One thing to note is that it is absolutely massive, so not ideal for small spaces. Overall, a good variety of flavours that aren’t bad for packet mash, and you can’t knock them for originality. LS
Hot drinks
Pukka tea
If, like me, you start to wilt under the sheer excess of Christmas – a chocolate a day, mince pies on repeat, drinks every other night – Pukka’s herbal tea Advent calendar is the perfect, low-key antidote. From Supreme Matcha Green to Vanilla Chai, there’s an organic blend for every mood, and the calendar is a great way to sample new flavours without splurging on full boxes.
My favourite teas were the soothing Night Time (chamomile and lavender) and the refreshing After Dinner (cardamom and fennel). The recyclable packaging is disappointingly unfestive, but it hangs neatly on a kitchen wall – ideal if your counters are already buried under Christmas clutter. Ella Jinadu
Rise coffee
I included Rise in my list of the best coffee subscriptions earlier this year, so I was excited to get into the brand’s Advent calendar. Featuring 24 17g sachets of single-origin coffee – and a mystery gift on Christmas Day – this globetrotting selection takes you to Mexico, Uganda, Peru, India, Vietnam and beyond for the cost of £1.67 per daily cup of delicious, aromatic coffee. As you’re opening a new mini bag each day, the coffee is outrageously fresh, and you needn’t feel bad about it – the pouches are recyclable (not always a given with coffee packaging).
The whole box is also recyclable, as you’d expect from a B Corp. I loved discovering the different coffees and found a few new favourites (hello smoky, buttery Cuba), plus the topline tasting notes behind each door are fun. A QR code gives you more information on notes, meeting the farmers and more, should you wish. A great Advent calendar for the coffee curious, and sustainable too. Joanne Gould
Bird & Blend matcha
If the festive season can sometimes get the better of you, then this matcha calendar might help. Famed for its slow-release caffeine, matcha is high in antioxidants, making it the perfect substitute for coffee. This calendar has 24 pots with 48 cups worth of matcha, and flavours spanning the slightly weird and wonderful. From mince pie to lemon, each is naturally flavoured and vegan.
The calendar itself is 100% plastic free, completely recyclable and comes with a step-by-step guide if you’re new to matcha. The only downside is that you need the correct tools, such as a bamboo matcha whisk, to enjoy the matcha properly, and these aren’t included. Charlotte Gornall
Alcohol
The Perfect Measure 25 Whiskies of the World
I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a whisky Advent calendar for a few Christmases, and this year’s version is as exciting and festive cheer-inducing as ever. Housed in sturdy cardboard (easily recyclable, bonus), you’re treated to a round-the-world exploration of 25 blended, single malt, bourbon and rye whiskies. Adventure through Scottish, Japanese, Irish, Danish, Australian and American drams, plus a few surprises, with familiar favourites and whiskies that were completely new to me. I really enjoyed a 15-year-old single malt scotch and a couple of experimental liquids from big-name distilleries that aren’t easily available.
There’s good value for money here too; some samples retail at about £70-80 for full-size bottles, so it’s a fun way to try before a potential buy. Great for fully signed-up devotees or anyone dipping a toe into the world of whisky to help work out what kind of styles you might like to invest in. Treat yourself. JG
Moth cocktails
From a spicy margarita to a piña colada, the Moth calendar contains 24 cans of nine different cocktails. The monochrome abstract snowy scene that adorns it doesn’t scream “Christmas”, but I guess it is festive in a more grownup way. I found the espresso martini had a nice balance of sweet and bitter, and the negroni (which are notoriously tricky to get right, because they can be disgusting if any measurements are off) was beautifully balanced between gin, vermouth and amaro. Moth’s cocktails really do feel bar-quality.
Each flap displayed either a quippy message such as “take this and wait under the mistletoe”, suggestions of garnish, a QR code to a recipe pairing or, on the 24th, a Spotify playlist – you can tell a lot of thought has gone into this. My only quibble is that the calendar works out at £3.29 per can, which is more expensive than buying a 24-can variety pack. LS
Drinks by the Dram spiced rum
All the Drinks by the Dram spirit Advent calendars are brilliant. A smart box of 25 miniatures is an excellent way to get into the festive spirit, and spiced rum lovers can look forward to discovering new varieties without having to commit to a full-size bottle. The vast majority of the samples in this collection are not available as a miniature, so you’re also getting good value for money and an element of exclusivity with this.
Filipino, Mauritian, Cuban, South African and Scottish rums pop up alongside the more famous rum-producing countries, and the flavours span anything from pineapple and pink grapefruit to Jaffa Cake and a yum black cherry concoction that peps up a Diet Coke no end. The calendar box is made from sturdy cardboard, and the bottles are glass, so all recyclable too. JG
Lifestyle
Papier
I’ve been obsessed with stationery since I was a child, so this calendar is the ultimate fix. The beautiful cardboard chest it comes in could be reused, and the treats are packed in gorgeous cardboard boxes – a joy to open. The gifts inside range from notebooks to pens, bookmarks, sticky notes, washi tape and a gorgeous mini stamp kit.
The downside is the guilt over so much packaging going to waste. Also, do I really need this many notebooks and gold paperclips in my life (although you could definitely pop a few bits in the kids’ stockings)? The cost is a lot for what you actually get, but stationary fans will love it. Suzanne Lemon
MakeBox & Co embroidery
I’m an embroidery novice but enjoyed using this charming kit. There’s one Christmassy motif for each day of Advent, and the idea is that it takes just 15 minutes to complete each one (mine took considerably longer!).
It includes everything you need, as well as two how-to pamphlets; I was a little intimidated, but the instructions worked well. The packaging is sustainable and low-key, and I found it very calming to stitch in front of the TV each evening. My only complaint is that the finished product is a bit chintzy for my taste. Ruth Lewy
St Eval tealights
A quietly lovely concept: 24 tealights inspired by winter on the north Cornish coast, with fragrances spanning hedgerow berries and herbs, sea salt and woodsmoke, figgy pudding and festive spice. It comes with a solid clay-pink holder (described as “gold-dusted” but far more understated than that implies), and each window includes a note on its scent. At £50 it’s not cheap, but lighting a new candle each night felt like a small, indulgent ritual. Some scents promised more than they gave off once burning, yet most filled the room with a natural, grownup fragrance – no cloying gingerbread or eggnog here.
One word of warning: I found each tealight lasted about two evenings, so either start the calendar early or be disciplined about putting half-burned ones back behind their doors, or you’ll end up with a jumble of unlabelled candles cluttering your side tables. Kate Lloyd
Yankee Candle
Twenty-four days of candles – 12 of which are tealights, 12 mini votives. There’s also a cute glass tealight holder in day one for use throughout Advent and beyond. Scents are, as you’d expect, festive, ranging from the sweet cinnamon stick to the fresh white spruce and grapefruit.
Impressively little plastic, with the calendar itself made from responsibly sourced cardboard. But each of the 12 tealights is housed in a plastic cup, which seems unnecessary. I liked how the calendar opened looked like a book, and the vintage-style snow-scene illustrations. Emily Goddard
Yorkshire Soap Co
A charming illustration adorns the front of this soap calendar, while the inside is more simply decorated. Each of the 12 doors hides a different full-size soap with scents such as Yorkshire Rose and Poppyseed, Honey and Bran, and my favourite, Lemongrass, Grapefruit, Rosemary and Calendula. They all smell lovely and lather well, but unless you’re a true soap enthusiast, there’s limited excitement in unveiling another fragrance each day.
Each soap can be either used or given as a gift, so nothing goes to waste. The packaging combines cardboard with a plastic tray, and one drawback is that the doors don’t open very cleanly, which affects its visual appeal when displaying it as part of your Christmas decor. Lisa Foreman
Crochet society
This calendar would make a rather sumptuous present for a budding crocheter. Untying the large box’s ribbon-sealed doors reveals 25 beautiful drawers, decorated in ombre colours with subtle celestial designs. Each box has a ball of yarn and a goodie, including hooks, stitch markers and other genuinely useful accessories. The accompanying booklet contains several patterns; the main “festive blanket”, which you construct by following the day-by-day instructions, and other smaller options (including a scarf, stockings and a hat) if you’d rather go at your own pace. All of them are kitschy, bright and fun.
The clear instructions are beginner friendly, with access to video tutorials if you get stuck. I really enjoyed having some regular craft time each evening with short and manageable daily goals (typically two or three rows). The packaging is top quality, and after Christmas, you can turn each drawer around to make an appealing and useful storage box for crochet bits and bobs – of which, as every crafting hobbyist will know, there are plenty! RL
SockShop
No one needs 25 pairs of Christmas socks, but this would make a fun family Advent calendar if the flurry of interest it created in the Guardian office is anything to go by. As soon as we opened the handsomely presented Advent box, people were diving in, lucky-dip style, to choose a pair, then immediately began swapping them with colleagues.
The socks range from full-on Christmassy (snowflakes, snowmen and Santas) to tastefully festive (deep red) and even plain old dark brown, and are made from bamboo, so nice and soft, but also toasty. They work out at £2.40 a pair, which isn’t bad value, but they are on the thin side, so not destined to become a wardrobe staple. More one for the back of the sock drawer, to be worn again next Christmas. Gavin McOwan
Toys
Squishmallows Micromallows
How many Micromallows – for the uninitiated, soft, palm-sized Squishmallows creatures – does a person need? Arguably, 24 is too many. This calendar features two dozen of them in pleasingly festive guises: baubles, Christmas trees, Christmas puddings, snowmen, reindeer, even dressed in Nordic knits. For a Squishmallows superfan, it’s heaven. For others, like my 11-year-old daughter – a lukewarm fan at best – it felt repetitive, with diminishing returns.
The calendar itself is boxy, bulky (though the cardboard box and plastic inner are recyclable) and uninspiring: the numbers run consecutively in a grid format, so there’s no joy in trying to find that day’s door; and even the pictures repeat. My daughter has given half a dozen to friends, but we still have nearly 20 gathering dust at home. HB
Lego Harry Potter
Behind the doors is a varied mix of Lego figures and small builds that you put together to reveal wizarding objects or magical creatures. The builds themselves took about five minutes each, which is probably appropriate for a daily calendar – a little dose of fun without being too time consuming. Even though I’m a big Harry Potter fan, I only found Harry, Draco Malfoy and Luna Lovegood instantly recognisable out of the eight figures.
I looked up the rest and they are based on more sideline characters: it feels a bit criminal that you get Hannah Abbott and Angelina Johnson over Ron, Hermione and other more central characters. But it’s still an entertaining calendar that Lego and Harry Potter fans will enjoy. Plus, for £29.99, it’s definitely at the cheaper end of toy calendars. LS
Pokémon TCG
This delighted the Pokémon fans in my family. Nicely presented, but disappointing that it came wrapped in film and has a plastic inner. This is a full 25-day Advent calendar that includes eight festive foil cards, six booster packs, seven fun packs, stickers and coins. By day two, we’d already found a holographic Greninja Ex hyper rare, which I’m told is a really good card. EG
Pets
Scrumbles cat treats
I wasn’t expecting much from this. Would a cat really appreciate an Advent calendar when they don’t even understand the concept of Christmas? But my cat Bobi became obsessed from the very first door, trying to stick his face inside and pulling the calendar around the floor. The doors aren’t particularly exciting for humans – no festive pictures, and you can’t tell what the different flavours are – and there’s a little too much plastic for my liking. But it’s an undeniably cute way to involve your felines in the festivities. MH
Pooch & Mutt dog Advent calendar
Behind each of the 24 doors were two “pigs in blankets” treats. I was expecting them to look like pigs in blankets since the box is illustrated with them, but they were clover-shaped instead. The dogs loved them, but there’s little they won’t eat. Why it had to come wrapped in plastic cellophane and with more plastic inside, I will never know, but the outside shell was recyclable cardboard. EG
Fill yourself
Fill your own LED Christmas tree
This wooden tree calendar has 24 empty drawers for you to fill with treats of your choice. It’s beautifully decorated and has built-in LED lights – making it as much a Christmas decoration as it is a calendar. I particularly love the cute little colourful pompoms and wooden baubles scattered all over it. The drawers are a good size for individually wrapped sweets or other small treats. It’s robust enough to be saved and reused each year, making it wonderfully sustainable. LS
Picture
National Portrait Gallery
This joyful, Christmassy calendar by Yorkshire-born illustrator Emily Sutton will charm your socks off every day of December. Behind each window are (mini spoiler alert) well-known faces from the gallery’s collection, and half the fun is identifying who’s who. It turned into an educational exercise with my daughter over breakfast. It folds out, 3D freestanding-style, and the scene is gloriously festive. It’s exceptionally thick and well-made: I bought a previous calendar by Sutton – a toy shop – and loved it so much I couldn’t bear to throw it in the recycling bin, so it’s been going for three years and counting now. HB
Angela Harding bringing home the tree
This beautifully illustrated fold-out calendar from much-loved artist Angela Harding (check out her recent Desert Island Discs on BBC iPlayer) displays a classic Christmas scene with a shadowy figure lugging a tree towards a cosy-looking cottage enveloped in snow. Each door reveals a different illustration that is cleverly placed to work within the snowy scene itself, meaning each day adds a new element to the story depicted. Despite the inescapable simplicity of picture calendars, this offering feels special – a truly wholesome way to count down to the big day. LS
Oxfam
This woodland creatures picture calendar will delight anyone under the age of six, and probably many of us older than that. A festive illustration hides behind every door, scattered across the domestic scene, and the cardboard is thick and good quality (there’s no plastic). It’s responsibly made, Oxfam says, at a worker-owned site in China with a progressive business model, and sales support Oxfam, so you’ll hopefully feel good about buying it, too. A nostalgic, simple, cheerful calendar that you’d be hard pushed to dislike. HB
For more Christmas inspiration from the Filter, read 15 sustainable gifts for young children and the best home gifts
