It’s that time of year when thoughts turn to the rotund jolly man in the red suit, to mince pies and mulled wine, to Eggnog Lattes and mistletoe and Christmas rhymes! It is also time for the Festive Coding Challenges to excite, infuriate, and divide developers (probably in equal measure).
Assuming you have enough time on your hands between the Christmas parties and the online shopping, there are plenty of sites out there offering up Christmas advent challenges, developer puzzles, and general programming conundrums to keep the old grey cells working. Those on offer cover the whole spectrum, from introductory levels aimed at helping you learn to program, to data science-oriented challenges, all the way through to advanced programming concepts.
In this month’s blog, we will take a look at what’s on offer during this 2025 festive period. So may your days always be happy and bright, and may all your code be right!
What is a Festive Coding Challenge?
Generally, the festive coding challenges are small coding projects with a holiday theme. They are usually less than an hour long and often expected to take only 10 or 20 minutes. For example, the Advent Of Code and JavaScriptmas sites focus on coding tasks associated with the season.
There is no one programming language which has to be used for all coding challenges. Some focus on a specific programming language, such as AdventJS (which is focussed on JavaScript) or the Mission Encodable Christmas Coding Challenges (which are Python festive coding challenges).
If you want to get involved, there are many websites available, and we will introduce some of them below. Don't be put off if you think "I can’t do 24 different coding challenges during Advent, life is too busy for that" (not to mention all those parties and glasses of mulled wine or cider!). It’s not a test. You can do as much or as little as you want. The real point is to make this a fun exercise, even if you are also learning something along the way.
Where to Look
If you want to explore a wider variety of coding challenges just use Google, as there are lots of options available. Do bear in mind different websites might target different levels of knowledge or experience. We will highlight a few in this blog that are often amongst the most popular.
For Beginners
Mission Encodeable Christmas Coding Challenges
AdventJS this has numerous introductory Christmas themed tasks – although make sure you are selecting those marked easy and not medium or hard.
The Little Book of Python Christmas Coding Challenges. This one is aimed at a younger audience but can still be fun of you are of a more (let us say) mature age.
CodeWizards HQ Create a Digital Holiday Card – possibly of more interest to younger people who want to learn to code for web sites; but still great if you are new to HTML, CSS and programming.
For Intermediate to Advanced
JavaScriptmas an Advent Calendar style set of festive challenges.
Advent Of Code is probably still one of the most popular festive themed coding challenges
Codemas 2025 This is the Advent Calendar for Software Developers.
AdventJS although this was also listed under beginners, the AdventJS site has a mix of tasks from easy, through medium to hard and so is accessible to developers of all levels.
Kaggle (AI and Machine Learning) Christmas Themed Projects.
YouTube
Advent of Code
The Advent Of Code is still one of the best known of the festive challenges. It is, as the name suggests, an Advent Calendar themed set of coding challenges. There is a new challenge each day from the 1st of December through to the 24th of December inclusive. Also starting this year, there will be 12 days of puzzles, so watch the Advent of Code site for more news on that.
The challenges are small programming puzzles for a variety of skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like. People use them as interview prep, company training, university coursework, practice problems, a speed contest, or to challenge each other.
It's worth noting that the difficulty and subject matter vary throughout each event. Very generally, the puzzles get more difficult over time, but your specific skillset will make each puzzle significantly easier or harder for you than someone else. Making puzzles is tricky.
Basic Programming Language Christmas Contest 2025
This is actually a Facebook group focused on Basic (any dialect), although interestingly not Visual Basic. The Christmas Contest is being run by Holger Weßling. It starts the 1st of December, and all the rules will be explained on that day. Everything will be run through the Facebook forum.
Mission Encodeable Christmas Coding Challenges
Mission Codeable has an annual Christmas Coding Challenge and the tradition continues in 2025. As with most of these festive coding challenges, it is free. In this case, the language being focused on is Python. Every project has a breakdown of steps and some hints to “ho-ho-help you on your way” if you get stuck.
AdventJS
The AdventJS site is again free. In this case it focuses on the JavaScript programming language, but the challenges can also be solved using TypeScript or indeed Python. AdventJS takes its inspiration from the Advent of Code.
The Little Book of Python Christmas Coding Challenges.
This is a paid for challenge, although at only £2, it is quite reasonably priced. The Little Book of Christmas Challenges has 10 challenge questions. You can even print the challenges as an A5 booklet for use in a group or just to browse through yourself. If you have kids doing GCSE Computer Science, then these tests can be very helpful in developing their skills.
CodeWizards HQ Create a Digital Holiday Card
The CodeWizards HQ HTML and CSS Tutorial for Kids: Holiday Card is really aimed at a much younger audience, but hey, aren’t we all kids at Christmas? Actually, if you are new to HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc., it is still a fun festive challenge.
JavaScriptmas
JavaScriptmas is another 24 daily JavaScript challenge style website. In this case, each day comes complete with some starter code and screencasts to introduce the challenge. There are prizes to be won for completing the challenges.
Codemas 2025
Codemas 2025 is the Advent Calendar for Software Developers. It claims to be the ultimate take on the Christmas Coding Challenges. From December 1st to the 24th (Advent) a new daily challenge will be unlocked. Each challenge is designed to improve your programming skills with just 20 to 30 minutes required. The aim is that by the end of the advent calendar you will be a better, stronger, and more confident programmer. Note that this is a paid challenge!
Kaggle
Kaggle is a platform that hosts data science competitions, provides access to datasets, and fosters an online community for data scientists and machine learning engineers to collaborate. It often hosts seasonal and Christmas-themed classification challenges, for instance on image datasets, with a public leaderboard for participants to compete on.
YouTube
There is a veritable festive feast available, so if you go to YouTube and type in something like ‘Christmas coding challenge’ or ‘Christmas python programming challenge’ you will find a whole host of videos on programming challenges. Of course, you can swap ‘Python’ element for your language of choice, although, we challenge you to find one in COBOL!
Summary
So, this Advent get coding, pick up a new language, challenge yourself, or just try to have some fun. There are lots of coding opportunities out there. Remember, if the rest of the family is trying to get you to come and join them as Great Aunt Agatha has just arrived, you can always claim that you are busy doing something to improve your skill set and employability!