In this article, we’ll look at Christmas photo contest ideas and real examples to inspire your campaign, as well as practical tips for collecting entries, displaying them in a gallery, choosing winners, and rewarding participants.
Why Run a Christmas Photo Contest?
A Christmas photo contest gives your audience a reason to actively participate in your seasonal campaign rather than simply view your Christmas content. Depending on how you set it up, it can support several marketing objectives:
- Collect user-generated content. Invite participants to submit original photos related to your campaign theme, products, or brand. With the appropriate permissions, this content can also become a valuable resource for future brand communications.
- Increase audience engagement. Photo contests encourage people to create and submit content, while an optional voting phase can give participants another reason to share their entries and involve their communities.
- Capture new leads and customer data. When participants register to submit their photos, you can collect the contact information and other data included in your registration form, together with the corresponding marketing consent.
- Promote products or seasonal campaigns. Build the contest around a product, store experience, Christmas collection, or other campaign theme to connect participation more closely with your marketing objectives.
- Reward your community. Prizes for winners, finalists, or even all participants can provide an additional incentive to take part and help you recognize the effort involved in creating an entry.
For example, Lost Mary, a vape brand, ran a Christmas photo contest in the US inviting customers to submit festive photos. It is a simple example of how a seasonal photo contest can encourage customers to create content around a brand and its products while giving them a reason to participate in a Christmas campaign.
Christmas is an especially good fit for this type of campaign because there are so many recognizable themes people can turn into photos. Christmas decorations, ugly sweaters, pets, festive outfits, family traditions, and seasonal products can all become the starting point for a Christmas photo competition.
Next, we’ll look at how to set up the contest before exploring Christmas photo contest ideas and examples you can adapt to your own campaign.
How to run a Christmas photo contest?
Start by deciding what you want participants to photograph and how the contest will support your Christmas campaign. Your theme can be broad, such as favorite festive moments, or tied more closely to your brand through products, stores, events, or a specific creative challenge.
From there, you need to define how people will submit their photos, what information you want to collect, whether entries will appear in a public gallery, and how the winners will be selected.
Create the Christmas Photo Contest and Registration Form
With Easypromos, you can create a dedicated Photo Contest where participants register and upload their image directly from their device. Customize the form to collect the information you need and include the relevant terms, privacy information, and permissions for the submitted content.
Once submitted and approved, photos can be displayed in a public gallery, giving visitors a place to browse the entries and, if voting is enabled, vote for their favorites.
This participation model also gives you considerable freedom over the creative concept. For example, participants don’t necessarily have to photograph themselves. They can submit pictures of decorations, products, pets, artwork, store displays, or other content related to your campaign.
For example, in the Easypromos Letter to Santa Photo Contest demo, participants take a picture of their letter to Santa and upload it to the promotion. In return for participating, they receive a discount, combining user-generated content with an immediate participation incentive.
Decide How Participants Will Access Your Contest
Your Christmas photo contest can have its own URL, which gives you flexibility to promote it across the channels that make sense for your campaign. Share it through your website, email communications, social media, or QR codes on physical promotional materials.
QR codes are particularly useful when participation is connected to a physical location, product, event, or in-store experience. Participants can scan the code and access the photo submission process directly from their phone.
Decide What Happens After Someone Submits a Photo
Submitting the photo doesn’t have to be the end of the participant experience. Depending on your objectives, you can:
- Display approved entries in a public photo gallery.
- Enable public voting so visitors can vote for their favorite entries.
- Encourage participants to share their individual entry and attract visitors to the gallery.
- Select winners through a random drawing, jury evaluation, public voting, or a combination of methods.
- Give participants an instant reward, such as the discount offered in the Letter to Santa demo.
We’ll look at the different winner-selection methods in more detail later in the article.
Christmas Photo Contest Ideas and Examples
There is no single formula for a successful Christmas photo contest. The theme can focus on your audience, products, physical locations, or a particular Christmas tradition, while the participation and winner-selection mechanics can be adapted to your campaign objectives.
Here are some Christmas photo contest ideas and real examples to inspire your next campaign.
Adapt the Christmas Theme to Your Audience
Rather than asking everyone to submit a generic festive photo, look for a Christmas theme that feels relevant to your particular community. The more closely the concept reflects your audience’s interests or everyday experiences, the more distinctive the resulting gallery can become.
Mallén Ganadería, a livestock-focused brand in the Dominican Republic, took this approach with its Navidad en el Campo Christmas photo contest. Participants registered and uploaded a festive photo of their farm or livestock operation, turning Christmas in the countryside into a theme specifically designed for the brand’s audience.
After the submission period, all the approved photos were displayed in the contest gallery for a separate voting phase. Users could vote for their favorite photo once per day, and the three entries with the most votes won livestock equipment, including a cattle chute for first place and feeders and waterers for second and third place.
The same principle can work in virtually any sector. A sports organization might ask for Christmas photos featuring team colors, a food brand could focus on festive recipes or tables, and a retailer could invite customers to photograph how its products form part of their Christmas celebrations.
Ask for the Funniest Christmas Photo
A simple creative prompt can make your contest more distinctive without making participation difficult. Instead of asking for the “best Christmas photo,” give participants an angle such as the funniest festive moment, most creative outfit, or most unexpected Christmas scene.
Lovemore Music, a musical instrument retailer in South Africa, invited participants to upload their funniest festive photo for the chance to win a Yamaha P-45B digital piano. Participants registered, uploaded their photo, and could share their entry with friends.
Unlike Mallén Ganadería’s voting contest, however, the winning photo wasn’t determined by popularity. One winner was selected randomly from all the entries, showing that the creative theme and winner-selection method don’t necessarily have to be connected.
This is useful if your main objective is to encourage participation and collect seasonal UGC rather than judge which participant created the “best” photo.
Run a Christmas Window Display Photo Contest
For retailers, distributors, and brands with physical points of sale, Christmas displays provide another natural photo contest theme. Participants can photograph decorated stores, windows, product displays, or other festive spaces and submit their creations to a shared gallery.
RETIF, a European retailer specializing in equipment and supplies for businesses, used this approach for its Christmas Window Display Contest. Participants had to create a festive window display that included at least one RETIF product and display the campaign’s official poster before submitting a photo of their creation.
Requiring a particular product or branded element can connect the creative challenge more directly with the organizer while still giving participants freedom over the final result.
Connect Your Christmas Photo Contest to an In-Person Experience
A Christmas photo contest can also begin offline. Use a QR code to connect a store visit, event, Christmas market, light display, or other physical experience with online photo submission.
The West Virginia Lottery, the state lottery of West Virginia, incorporated this approach into its Christmas-themed Illuminated Adventure and Treasure Quest. Participants visited participating Christmas light attractions or mazes and searched for a QR code within the experience. Once they found it, they took a photo next to the QR code and used the code itself to access the promotion and submit their picture.
Participants then entered random drawings for prizes that included West Virginia Lottery promotional instant tickets, college sports and concert tickets, T-shirts, and other merchandise.
This type of campaign turns the photo into proof of participation in a wider experience and gives the QR code two roles: part of the activity itself and the access point to the digital promotion.
Turn Christmas Artwork into a Photo Contest
The content submitted to a photo contest doesn’t necessarily have to originate as a photograph. Participants can first create something offline and then photograph their creation to enter it digitally.
Unide, a Spanish network of independent food retailers, used this model for a Christmas drawing contest. Participants were asked to draw what Christmas meant to them, take a photo of their artwork, and submit the image to enter for the chance to win a scooter.
This approach opens up additional Christmas photo competition ideas involving children’s drawings, Christmas crafts, handmade decorations, recipes, gingerbread houses, or other creative projects while still using photo upload as the participation method.
Invite Customers to Share Festive Pet Photos
Pets are another accessible photo contest theme, particularly when your audience already has a strong connection with animals. Christmas sweaters, costumes, decorated settings, and pets beside the Christmas tree can all provide a simple creative prompt.
We don’t actually need to pretend we have a Christmas example here. OCMBC Inc. ran a Halloween Pet Costume Contest in the US, inviting participants to submit photos of their pets in costume before visitors voted for their favorites.
The same participation model can easily be adapted for Christmas by replacing Halloween costumes with festive pet photos and presenting the submissions in a Christmas-themed gallery. This is also a good example of how an effective photo contest concept can be reused for different seasonal campaigns rather than rebuilt from scratch.
Create a Different Kind of Christmas Photo Experience
Finally, you don’t necessarily have to ask participants to upload a photo they have already taken. You can make the creation of the image part of the interactive experience itself.
With Easypromos PhotoFun, participants can take or upload a photo and personalize it with branded frames, stickers, and other graphic elements created for the campaign.
Our Virtual Christmas Party PhotoFun demo, for example, shows how this can be used to create a festive photo experience for employees or other communities. Participants can create their own Christmas-themed image as part of the campaign rather than simply submitting a conventional festive photo.
This can be particularly useful for Christmas parties, employee engagement campaigns, events, and branded seasonal activations where creating and sharing the image is part of the experience.
How Do You Choose Winners in a Christmas Photo Contest?
How you select the winners depends on what you want to achieve with your photo contest. You can randomly select winners from all valid entries, let the public vote for their favorite photos, or appoint a jury to evaluate the submissions.
Each method creates a different participant experience, so it is worth deciding how winners will be chosen before launching the campaign and explaining the process clearly in your contest rules.
Select a Winner Randomly
A random drawing works well when submitting an eligible photo is enough to qualify for the prize and you don’t need to judge the quality or creativity of each entry. Every valid participant can have the same chance of winning, which can also make the contest more accessible.
Lovemore Music, a musical instrument retailer in South Africa, used this approach for its Christmas campaign. Participants registered and uploaded their funniest festive photo for the chance to win a Yamaha P-45B digital piano. Rather than choosing the funniest photo, the winner was randomly selected from all entries.
This approach is particularly useful when the photo submission is designed to generate participation and seasonal UGC rather than function as a creative competition.
Let the Public Vote for Their Favorite Photos
Public voting adds another stage to your Christmas photo contest. Once entries have been submitted and approved, display them in a gallery and invite your audience to vote for their favorites.
Mallén Ganadería, a livestock-focused brand in the Dominican Republic, used this model for its Navidad en el Campo contest. After participants submitted Christmas photos of their farms or livestock operations, the entries were displayed in a public gallery. Users could cast one vote per day, and the three photos with the most votes at the end of the voting period won the prizes.
Voting can encourage participants to share their entries and bring additional visitors to the contest gallery. You should establish the voting period, limits, and winner-selection criteria clearly in the contest rules.
Ask a Jury to Select the Winners
A jury is a better fit when you want winners to be selected according to the quality, creativity, originality, or relevance of their submissions rather than popularity or chance. The judging criteria and process should be established in the contest rules.
Ria Money Transfer, an international money transfer company, ran its Christmas photo contest in both the Czech Republic and Poland. Customers submitted Christmas-themed photos as part of the promotion, and the winners were selected by a jury appointed by the organizer.
In both campaigns, participation was also connected to Ria’s service: entrants provided the number of an eligible in-person money transfer when submitting their photo. Ten winners were selected by the jury, demonstrating how a creative photo contest can also be linked to a customer action.
What Should the Rules of a Christmas Photo Contest Include?
Before launching your Christmas photo contest, publish clear rules explaining who can participate, what they can submit, how winners will be selected, and how the submitted photos may be used.
The exact requirements will depend on your campaign and applicable legislation, but your photo contest rules should generally cover:
- Eligibility and participation period. Define who can enter, including any age or geographical restrictions, and establish clear opening and closing dates.
- Photo requirements. Explain the Christmas theme, permitted formats, number of entries allowed, and any other conditions the submitted content must meet.
- Originality and third-party rights. Require participants to submit content they are entitled to use and establish any necessary conditions regarding people, brands, or other protected material appearing in the photos.
- Image-use permissions. If you intend to reuse participant photos in your marketing communications, specify the rights participants grant you and how and where their content may be used.
- Moderation and disqualification. Establish what content will not be accepted and under what circumstances an entry, participant, or fraudulent voting activity may be excluded.
- Winner selection. State whether winners will be selected through a random drawing, public voting, a jury, or another method. For judged contests, include the relevant evaluation criteria where appropriate.
- Prizes and winner notification. Describe the prizes, how winners will be contacted, and any conditions for claiming them.
- Personal data. Explain what participant data will be collected, why it is required, and how it will be processed. Any consent for future marketing communications should also be handled appropriately.
- Social media disclaimers. If your campaign is promoted through platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, include any required releases and clarify that the promotion is not sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with those platforms.
The Ria Money Transfer Christmas photo contest is a useful example of how these elements come together. Its terms established participant eligibility, the campaign period, photo originality requirements, personal data processing, grounds for disqualification, and the jury-based winner-selection process. They also granted Ria permission to use submitted photos on its social media channels for up to one year and included a Facebook and Instagram disclaimer.
With Easypromos, you can publish the legal terms and privacy information as part of the promotion and require participants to accept them during registration.
Tip: Decide how you want to use the submitted photos before writing your contest rules. Displaying entries in the contest gallery and obtaining permission to reuse them later in brand communications are different considerations, so the intended use of participant content should be clearly established from the start.
Christmas Photo Contest FAQs
Yes. You can promote a Christmas photo contest on Instagram and direct participants to a photo submission form, or create a campaign in which Instagram content is part of the participation mechanic. The best setup depends on whether your priority is collecting participant data, displaying entries in a gallery, generating social media content, or a combination of these objectives. With Easypromos, you can also combine your photo contest with other Instagram tools and promotional mechanics depending on how you want users to participate.
Yes. A prize for the eventual winner doesn’t have to be the only incentive. You can also give participants an immediate reward after they submit their photo, such as a discount or promotional benefit.
You can request the appropriate permissions to use submitted photos beyond the contest itself, but how you intend to use the content should be clearly established in the campaign terms. Participants should know what rights they are granting the organizer, for what purposes, and under what conditions.
Looking for more Christmas campaign ideas? Explore our Christmas Campaign resources for interactive Christmas promotions, games, contests, and ready-to-try demos you can adapt to your brand.
Have a Christmas photo contest campaign in mind? Contact us via live chat or request a video call to discuss your objectives. We’ll be happy to review your use case and help you choose the best participation model for your audience and channels.
