Advent calendars have evolved in the commercial space from tiny boxes of chocolate to one of retail’s most reliable Q4 growth engines. In 2025, these seem to be everywhere as retailers from beauty brands, grocers, toy brands and even pet labels proliferate advent calendars to drive not only revenue but product discovery and customer loyalty.
The Early Players
Candy brands like Sees, Godiva and Lindt have been building Advent collections for years, both online and in grocery stores. But recently, grocery stores have started offering their own calendars. Aldi is a longtime mainstay in the grocery space, with a range of calendars that include chocolate, hot sauce, tea and more. The now-famous Aldi Wine Advent Calendar, with 24 mini bottles, has garnered substantial media and consumer attention.
Sephora, L’Occitane, Clinique, Benefit Cosmetics and more have also long used Advent calendars to introduce their hero SKUs in mini form. These brands typically “ladder” pricing, from entry mini-sampler calendars under $40 to prestige or luxury $150–$300 calendars containing full-size items. For example, Sephora now offers multiple calendar SKUs each holiday season: a sample-size discovery box and a premium edition of full-size items.
Category Expansion
In the last three years, Advent calendars have moved well beyond chocolate and beauty into coffee, crafts, pantry staples, home fragrance, wellness and more.
For example, Nespresso’s 2025 Vertuo Advent Calendar reads like a mini coffee tasting tour. Each day reveals a curated capsule, ranging from core blends to seasonal limited editions. The final day includes a limited-edition festive mug.
Trader Joe’s has successfully tapped its sizable pet-parent fanbase by offering them for cats and dogs. These calendars are tiny in footprint, easy impulse add-ons at checkout, and fuel enormous organic sharing on social media (“my cat’s Advent calendar reaction”). They’re small revenue drivers that punch far above their weight in building brand loyalty. Meanwhile, LEGO continues has franchised calendars across Star Wars, Harry Potter, Minecraft, Friends and Frozen, each year offering exclusive accessories and limited-edition minifigures with retailers like Amazon.
Luxury Advent Calendars
Luxury retailers have embraced Advent calendars as a way to offer entry-level luxury while still preserving brand mystique. For these calendars, the presentation is often as or more important than the products themselves.
For example, Charlotte Tilbury’s 2025 Beauty Treasure Chest, at $220, doubles as a keepsake jewelry box. Other luxury players follow the same strategies:
- Jo Malone’s $495 2025 calendar is uniquely shaped like a wheel.
- SkinCeuticals’ $550 calendar doubles as a jewelry box, with mirror.
- Christian Louboutin’s $720 calendar is shaped as a hot box.
- Villeroy & Boch offers a $500 calendar full of dinnerware and another calendar with custom ornaments.
- The jewelry brand Astrid & Miyu’s 24k gold jewelry is displayed in a custom jewelry box.
Luxury Advent calendars are seen by those who can afford them as effective for gifting, where the unboxing experience becomes as important as the product itself.
Local Advent Calendars
Local retailers and small producers are also capitalizing on the trend, especially those in beverages, craft goods and gourmet foods.
For example, The Brew Shop in Arlington, Virginia, has a customized craft beer Advent calendar (and similar independent bottle shops nationwide) featuring regional brewers and seasonal limited-release cans. These often sell out via preorder and drive repeat purchasing in January when customers return for “favorites” they discovered during the countdown.
Dandelion Chocolate, a local San Francisco craft chocolate maker, has a 2025 Advent Calendar, with each candy placed in its own ornament box illustrated by an artist. And Etsy features many handmade calendars from small businesses, like a candle Advent calendar and a junk journal calendar.
These local Advent models work because they feel personalized and not mass-produced, infused with a sense of community and/or regional identity.
Leveraging Influencers
24 unboxings give brands many chances to trend.
Calendars are natural content engines, and retailers have paired up with both traditional media and social media influencers to coordinate early “what’s inside” reveals. For example, Allure’s 2025 guide highlights mainstream and niche beauty calendars, while People recently published a comparison of 2025’s different LEGO calendars on Amazon. Other coverage includes New York Magazine, HuffPost, the Today Show and WIRED.
On social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, short-form video comparisons, both sponsored and not, push traffic back to retailers. These calendars are reaching the top of shoppers’ feeds as they search to find special items for gifting.
Prepping for 2026 Traffic
For retailers, Advent calendars provide customers with trial kits for future purchases. To leverage this, boxes can include QR codes that take shoppers back to full-size products or discount offers for future purchases. Others link to subscribe-and-save options.
Advent calendars now sit at the intersection of commerce, content, gifting and subscription strategy. For retailers planning 2026 calendars now, these strategies are providing paths this year:
- Offer laddered price points
- Design packaging for reuse and display
- Include local or artisan products if possible
- Include clear paths and discounts to full-size or subscription products
- Work with influencers in the target audience to reach customers
Stores are using Advent calendars to bring in strategic revenue at the end of the year while also bridging discovery, gifting and customer engagement, one tiny door at a time.
Image via Unsplash.