25 Best Advent Calendars for Teens Who Deserve a Treat
Beauty products, pop-culture trinkets, and snacks—you can't go wrong!
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Teens, even more than little kids, really like to indulge themselves with little pick-me-ups every day. That's why they're the perfect recipients for a great advent calendar, especially if they get one that's tailored to their interests. Luckily, many options abound, and it's easy to find one for every type of teenager out there.
The best advent calendars for teens don't just ply them with chocolate or daily trinkets and toys. It has to speak to them. That's why these rose to the top, because they offer something more than just a plastic bauble. Some give them activities to work on, like a craft or a puzzle, while they're waiting for Christmas to come. Others help them show off their fandom for their favorite movies, TV shows, and characters. And some, yes, have sweet treats—but candy that they won't be able to get at their nearest convenience store. Grab one, and make the wait to Christmas seem a little less long.
Wicked For Good: The Official Advent Calendar
Families with musical-theater kids at home can thrill them with Wicked-themed stickers, patches, magnets, coasters, and other little treats. Or, if they're a superfan, they might even want the deluxe version. They're both from Insight Editions, and for those with teens on their list, the publisher does similar advent calendars for a ton of teen faves, including My Hero Academia, Elf, Supernatural, Fallout, Friends, Dragon Ball Z, Batman, Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Dungeons & Dragons.
RELATED: The Best Gifts for Wicked Fans
With this this escape-room-style advent calendar, they'll have to solve a puzzle that'll tell them which door to open for the next day. New for 2025, the story involves entering a giant space race for a lucrative prize, provided players can beat the other teams. If they enjoy it, get them more Exit: The Game sets for their stockings.
Refresh their makeup stash in one go with this beauty advent calendar. It comes with skincare, bath items, and cosmetics that they'll love to experiment with. There are 24 items in all, including one exclusive gift.
The next (and last) season of Stranger Things doesn't end until December 31, which makes it the perfect theme for an advent calendar. This one has lots of treats and candies that go great with watching the show, like lemon candy Pac-Men, gummy pizza slices, and waffle lollipops.
Get their creativity flowing with this art set, which comes with materials like polymer clay, embroidery yarn, and jewelry tools, plus ideas for projects to do with them. Or, if they're more artsy than crafty, there's also the Arteza Fine Art advent calendar.
This advent calendar gives players ages 10 and up a chance to solve a mystery over the course of the month. In addition to puzzles and clues, teens will get other goodies like new versions of the Clue tokens in chic winter attire.
Some kids turn into teens without outgrowing their plush phase. These adorable plushies are meant to give some emotional support—squeeze when you feel stressed!—and when all the doors are open, they'll have five each of fries, pickles, wreaths, chicken nuggets, and yeti, all with different expressions.
No, their love of squishing things around in their hands didn't end with Play-Doh. Indulge their urge to squash, sniff, and mold with this advent calendar, which offers 12 different small tins of putty. Some of them even have seasonal scents, like pumpkin pie, festive wreath, frosted cookie, or even fruitcake.
This bath set comes with different, trial size hand lotions in fun holiday scents. They're the perfect size for stashing in backpacks, purses, or a locker.
For teens who like building and love to play games, this calendar is just the trick. Each day offers a new electronic component, which teens can use to build their own retro games, Whack A Mole, Ping Pong, or Code Breaker.
They can never have too much ChapStick, and this advent calendar will refill their stash with lip balms in flavors like sugar cookie and candy cane. They're much-needed on cold, winter days!
They say a magician never reveals their tricks, but this advent calendar will do it for them. Each day offers something new to try, including classic magic tricks and even a few STEM experiments. There are links to instructional videos from professional magicians.
Whether they believe in the healing power of crystals or just want to add new specimens to their rock collections, this advent calendar comes with 24 rocks, gems, and crystals, and even a necklace. It also comes with information about the properties of each type of stone.
For those who want to go back to basics, there's nothing wrong with a chocolate advent calendar. But it doesn't have to be cheap grocery-store chocolate: These Cadbury advent calendars are filled with 24 different candies from across the pond, including Wispas, Twirls, and Dairy Milk bars. They'll love trying out new confections they can't get every day.
They never get tired of LEGO, and each year the LEGO advent calendar slate is a much-anticipated event. For 2025, there are LEGO advent calendars for Star Wars, Minecraft, and Harry Potter, (in addition to Frozen, LEGO City, and LEGO Friends for the little ones). Each one comes with a mix of minifigures and small builds that fit the theme, and also have some seasonal touches. Ages 6+
When they're just looking for a little pick-me-up every day, they can enjoy 24 different squishy toys. Some of them are seasonal, and will help their desks look ready for the holidays, and others are just adorable. A couple even glow in the dark!
While this advent calendar doesn't choose the books for them, it'll help them lean into the hygge with items for readers like a winter reading bingo card, a magnetic page-clip bookmark, book tags, and more.
Christmas Through the Window Jigsaw Puzzle Advent Calendar
This is the perfect way to do a jigsaw puzzle: a little at a time. Each day offers a small jigsaw puzzle of a tiny, wintry scene, but they combine to make one larger holiday picture. It's a good lesson for teens that little things, done every day, add up to a lot.
They'll be able to collect Earth's Mightiest Heroes as Earth's tiniest heroes with Funko's advent calendar of teeny, almost-one-inch-tall Bitty Pops. It even comes with little tree-shaped stand to display them in.
Fans of Luffy and his merry band of pirates can find One Piece trinkets like pens, socks, patches, and bookmarks all inspired by the Netflix show (not the original anime).
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; previously, she wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her toy-collecting husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found helping out her team at bar trivia or posting about movies on Twitter and Bluesky.
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