16 Best Advent Calendars for Counting Down to the Holidays (2026)

The holidays tend to bring chaos—especially if you’ve volunteered to host a party or cook a festive meal. While the best advent calendars don’t neutralize the madness, they can offer a small but meaningful reprieve in the form of a daily sweet treat or miniature giftable. In pursuit of the best advent calendars around, we found many options that festively blend in with your holiday decor, steering clear of basic chocolate Santas and typical winter-holiday color palettes of red, green, gold, or silver. While some advent calendars come prefilled, with all the work done already, we included a few beautiful options that provide the foundation for you to handpick an assortment of your own. Between festive fruit jams, beauty buys, decadent fragrances, and gourmet chocolates galore, here are 16 calendars you’ll want to snap up by December 1.

Our Top Picks

• Best Fragrance Calendar: Jo Malone London Advent Calendar
• Best Foodie Calendar: Bonne Maman Mini Jam Advent Calendar
• Best Chocolate Calendar: Dandelion Chocolate Advent Calendar
• Best DIY Calendar: Crate & Barrel Hotel Holiday Advent Calendar
• Best Unconventional Calendar: Anthropologie Christmas Tree Advent Calendar

Pre-Filled Advent Calendars

Jo Malone’s calendar celebrates the holidays with sweet-smelling treats enclosed in numbered tartan cloth wrapping. An elegant three-tiered box that you won’t mind leaving out in the open houses miniature- and travel-size favorites from the brand, including English pear and freesia cologne, lime basil and mandarin hand cream, and peony and blush suede hand wash, among others

The delicious fruit spreads and honeys in Bonne Maman’s 24-day calendar are the perfect way to start your December mornings. Behind each cardboard door you’ll find fun flavors like strawberry guava, chestnut orange, mango raspberry lime, strawberry star anise, and more. “I look forward to receiving this calendar every year,” Lee says. “I’ve gotten creative with how I incorporate the jams into my routine—drinks, desserts, and—of course—a slice of sourdough toast.”

Dandelion’s sweet assortment counts down to Christmas with dark chocolate and gourmet fillings. The brand tapped 24 award-winning chocolatiers across North America and in Japan to create specialty flavors like raspberry rosemary bomb and orange vanilla hazelnut. Each chocolate surprise is packaged in a mini box that doubles as a tree ornament and there’s even an illustrated book filled with Nordic myths and folk stories to enjoy with your treats.

Stationery heads will find joy in this 12-day countdown calendar packed with exciting accessories like pen clips and mini notebooks that support the pursuit of perfect penmanship. Don’t be surprised if you find a handwritten thank-you letter in the mail soon after gifting this one.

Liberty’s advent calendar blends in seamlessly with traditional holiday decor. The exterior draws inspiration straight from the London department store’s iconic mock-Tudor facade, embellished with a wintry mix of illustrated snowmen, nutcrackers, and holiday shoppers. Inside, you’ll find a star-studded mix of beauty bestsellers curated in partnership with the iconic Helena Bonham Carter.

Fragrance aficionados covet Diptyque’s lavish holiday advents, which come packed with 25 days of the brand’s signature fragrances, including Do Son, Sapin, and shopping editor Audrey Lee’s favorite Feu de Bois. Along with the classic aromas, you’ll also find some limited-edition holiday scents and a couple of festive ornaments for your tree.

Several Shop AD team members like Lee, and tastemakers like Shea McGee are fans of Maison Louis Marie. The fragrance and body-care brand’s 12 Days of Discovery calendar includes fan favorites like the No.04 Bois de Balincourt, which appears in multiple iterations (perfume, hand cream, room spray) throughout the countdown.

Any fragrance connoisseur will appreciate Apotheke’s 25-day calendar, with its expansive collection of candles, diffusers, and tools in limited-edition sizes. The brand’s Bitter Cherry scent, featured in the advent, is in contributor Kate McGregor’s fall rotation. “I find that it burns clean, and the smell travels without angering my air purifier,” she says.

Opening one of this calendar’s drawers each day in December feels like finding chocolate on your pillow in a luxury hotel room. An ode to New York City hotels during the holiday season, this shrunken Plaza look-alike brings seriously festive energy with miniature garlands, a snowy rooftop, and twinkly lights.

DIY Advent Calendars

Opening one of this calendar’s drawers each day in December feels like finding chocolate on your pillow in a luxury hotel room. An ode to New York City hotels during the holiday season, this shrunken Plaza look-alike brings seriously festive energy with miniature garlands, a snowy rooftop, and twinkly lights.

Celebrate the countdown to Christmas with this creative wax “calendar” that’s shaped like a classic pine tree. Burn the initial segment starting on December 1, and come back to do the same each day leading up to Christmas to bring some seasonal cheer to your daily winter routine.

Though it’s not advertised as an advent calendar, this winter-themed shelf has lots of potential to spread cheer. The larger size comes with tiny wooden skiers, miniature houses with snowy rooftops, and shrunken pine trees to accessorize the 20 cubbies. But you could easily swap a few out with your favorite holiday sweets.

We sense some greenhouse inspiration behind this sophisticated glass advent designed for tea lights. Frosted numerals bring a cozy element to the silhouette while brass flourishes provide an elegance to the miniature house. You can feel free to get creative here, too: There’s nothing stopping you from filling the empty cubbies with tiny surprises to count down the holiday season, like jewelry or festive socks.

The Met’s wood-carved calendar pays homage to the museum’s tradition of decorating a Christmas tree with Neapolitan Baroque Crèche angel ornaments. The calendar features 24 angelic decals to count down to December 25. It’s a sweet way to surprise the art lover in your life, especially if you hide some small drawings of your own behind a few of the doors.

This wooden advent calendar depicting a picturesque winter village is a design by Norwegian artist Maren Baxter, known for her intricate paper-house creations. Rounded tiers of miniature drawers bring an interactive element to the decoration; we think you’ll have just as much fun filling the slots with your favorite sweets and miniatures as you will watching a loved one open them.

This village of miniature wooden houses collectively makes up a less-than-typical advent calendar. Each darling structure has laser-engraved numerals and is, itself, the treat. Each building is small enough to fit perfectly under the Christmas tree, but you could just as easily set it up as a bespoke holiday centerpiece for the dinner table or sneak a couple in clandestine places around the house and send the kids searching.