For example, you might publish a new Instagram giveaway every day, reveal a different prize with each post, use Stories to encourage daily interaction, or combine several posts into a final random drawing. The format you choose will depend on your campaign objectives, available resources, and how often you want your audience to participate.
In this guide, we’ll explain how to create an Instagram Advent Calendar step by step, from planning your campaign and selecting winners to using Instagram Stories. You’ll also find free downloadable resources for 24-day and 5-day Advent Calendars, customizable Instagram Stories templates, and practical examples to help you prepare your campaign.
Looking for more than an Instagram Advent Calendar? With the Easypromos Advent Calendar, you can create a fully branded interactive calendar where participants return each day to unlock new content and activities. Combine giveaways with games, coupons, instant prizes, quizzes, and other mechanics to create a complete digital Advent experience for your brand.
How to Create an Instagram Advent Calendar
Before preparing your posts, decide how long your campaign will run and what followers will be able to do each day. You don’t necessarily need to publish 24 giveaways to use the Advent Calendar concept effectively.
Choose Between a 24-Day Advent Calendar or a Shorter Christmas Countdown
A traditional Advent Calendar runs from December 1 through December 24, revealing something new each day. On Instagram, brands can recreate this format by publishing 24 consecutive posts with daily giveaways, prizes, offers, or other Christmas content. This creates a month-long campaign in which followers can return to the profile each day to discover the next installment.
dm drogerie markt Romania, the Romanian division of the European drugstore and cosmetics retailer, followed this approach with a complete 24-day Instagram Advent Calendar. Each day introduced a new giveaway featuring product gift packages available through the retailer, giving followers a fresh reason to return and participate throughout December.
A full 24-day campaign isn’t the only option. If publishing every day from December 1 to 24 requires more content, prizes, or resources than your campaign allows, you can adapt the countdown concept to a shorter period. Five-day campaigns, 12 Days of Christmas giveaways, and other Christmas countdowns can use the same principle: reveal something new on consecutive days and give followers a reason to return.
For example, influencer Andy Benavides ran “Andy’s 12 Days of Xmas” on Instagram, publishing a series of Christmas giveaways in the run-up to Christmas. Each installment introduced another opportunity for her community to participate and win a prize.
Whether you choose a complete 24-day Advent Calendar or a shorter Christmas countdown, plan the campaign before publishing the first post. Define the dates, participation mechanic, prizes, creative assets, winner-selection process, and communication schedule so that each post is clearly connected to the wider Christmas campaign.
Decide How Your Instagram Advent Calendar Giveaways Will Work
There are several ways to structure the giveaway element of your calendar:
- Select a winner from each daily post. Publish a new giveaway post each day and run a separate random drawing for every post. This closely reproduces the experience of opening a new Advent Calendar window and discovering a new opportunity to win.
- Build toward one final giveaway. Publish several giveaway posts throughout the campaign and bring eligible participation together for a final random drawing. This allows the individual posts to form part of a larger promotion with one main prize.
- Combine daily prizes with a final giveaway. Select winners throughout the Advent Calendar while also giving participants the opportunity to qualify for a larger prize at the end. This works particularly well when you want daily rewards while maintaining anticipation throughout the full campaign.
You can use the same participation mechanic throughout the calendar so followers quickly understand what they need to do, while changing the prize, question, or creative from one day to the next.
How to Pick Winners from Your Instagram Advent Calendar
How you select winners depends on the structure you chose for your Advent Calendar. You can run a separate random drawing after each daily giveaway or combine participation from several Instagram posts into a final winner selection.
Select a Winner from Each Daily Giveaway
If you’re offering a different prize each day, use Instagram Giveaway to import the comments from that day’s post and randomly select the winner and alternates.
Once participation has closed, connect the Instagram account that published the giveaway, select the corresponding post, and configure the requirements and exclusions for the random drawing. Easypromos then randomly selects the winners and alternates from the eligible participants.
You can publish the results through a Winners Page, and Easypromos automatically generates a Certificate of Validity documenting the winner-selection process.
If you’ve never run an Instagram Giveaway with Easypromos, your first giveaway for an Instagram profile is free, so you can test the complete winner-selection process with one of your Advent Calendar posts.
Need the complete process? Follow our step-by-step Instagram Giveaway tutorial to import your giveaway post and randomly select the winners.
Select a Final Winner from Several Advent Calendar Posts
If your campaign builds toward one final prize, you don’t have to select a winner independently from every post. Easypromos lets you include multiple Instagram posts in the same giveaway, bringing eligible comments from the different Advent Calendar posts together for the final random drawing.
Kitoons, a French children’s entertainment brand, used this approach for its Instagram Advent Calendar. After publishing 25 giveaway posts throughout the campaign, the brand brought participants from all 25 posts together in Easypromos for a final grand prize random drawing.
This opens up different ways to structure participation. For example, you can give followers a new opportunity to participate with each Advent Calendar post, or establish specific participation requirements for the final giveaway.
Publishing your Advent Calendar giveaways on more than one social network? With a Multi-Network Giveaway, you can bring eligible participation from giveaway posts on Instagram and Facebook together into a single random winner selection.
Free Resources to Create Your Instagram Advent Calendar
Once you’ve decided how your campaign will work, you can start preparing the daily posts. Using a consistent visual style throughout the campaign helps followers recognize each installment as part of the same Advent Calendar while the numbering makes it clear where they are in the countdown.
To make the creative process easier, we’ve prepared free Instagram Advent Calendar resources for both 24-day and 5-day campaigns. Choose the full set if you’re planning a traditional December 1–24 calendar, or the shorter version if you’re concentrating your campaign into five days.
The downloadable resources include numbered images that you can use as the basis for your daily Instagram posts, together with guidance to help you plan the campaign. Customize the posts with your own prizes, messaging, and brand identity so that the campaign feels consistent with your other Christmas communications.
What Should You Include in Each Instagram Advent Calendar Post?
Each daily post should make it immediately clear what followers can win and how they can participate. Keep the participation instructions consistent where possible so users don’t have to learn a completely new process every day.
A giveaway post should generally communicate the prize, participation requirements, closing date and time, and how or when the winner will be announced. You should also make the promotion’s Terms and Conditions accessible and clearly identify any relevant eligibility requirements.
You can then vary the question or conversation prompt from one day to the next. Instead of asking followers to leave an arbitrary comment, use questions related to your brand, products, Christmas, or the day’s prize to make the comments more relevant to the campaign.
Instagram Advent Calendar Giveaway Post Template
ADVENT CALENDAR: DAY [XX] 🎄
Today’s prize is [PRIZE]. Want the chance to win?
To participate, leave a comment and tell us [QUESTION/PROMPT].
Entries close on [DATE] at [TIME]. We’ll announce the winner on [DATE/METHOD].
You can follow [@USERNAME] to keep up with the next Advent Calendar giveaways and winner announcements.
Full Terms and Conditions: [LINK / LINK IN BIO]
How to Create an Instagram Stories Advent Calendar
Instagram Stories can complement your daily feed giveaways or become an Advent Calendar format of their own. For example, you could publish a new Story each day with a question, prize, or activity and invite followers to participate directly through Instagram.
With Easypromos, there are two ways to run giveaways based on interactions with Instagram Stories:
Run a Giveaway from Story Replies
With Instagram Story Giveaway, followers participate by replying directly to your Instagram Story. Easypromos retrieves the replies received through Instagram Direct Messages so you can use them as entries in a random drawing.
For an Advent Calendar, you could publish a different Story each day and ask a new question related to Christmas, your brand, products, or the prize. This gives followers a simple way to participate without leaving Instagram.
If you’re expecting a high volume of replies, clearly communicate the participation period for each daily giveaway so followers know which Story and prize their response corresponds to.
Run a Giveaway from Story Mentions
You can also invite followers to publish their own Instagram Story mentioning your brand. With the Story + Mention mechanic, Easypromos can retrieve Stories from public profiles that mention your Instagram account and include those users in the giveaway.
This approach is useful when you want participants to actively share campaign-related content rather than simply reply to one of your Stories. For example, you could reveal a different prompt on selected days of your Advent Calendar and ask followers to respond by publishing their own Story and mentioning your brand.
Easypromos can retrieve eligible Story interactions from the previous 30 days, giving you more flexibility when managing an Advent campaign that runs across several days.
Want to respond to participants automatically? You can combine your Instagram Giveaway campaign with Instagram Messaging Automations to send automated messages when users interact with your account through supported Instagram triggers.
Free Instagram Stories Advent Calendar Template
You don’t need to design every daily Story from scratch. We’ve created a customizable Instagram Stories Advent Calendar template in Canva that you can adapt with your own branding, text, prizes, and participation instructions.
Use the Instagram Stories Advent Calendar template and customize the daily Stories for your Christmas campaign.
Have an Instagram Advent Calendar campaign in mind? Contact us via live chat or request a video call to discuss your objectives. We’ll be happy to review your campaign idea and help you choose the best format and participation mechanic for your audience.
