Beautiful Ideas for an Ugly Sweater Contest

December brings a host of beautiful sights, and – we must admit – more than a few eyesores. With its bright colors and eclectic decorations, the holidays have a reputation for tackiness that many of us Christmas-lovers embrace. How else can you explain the popularity of ugly sweater parties?

Just so we’re on the same page, an ugly sweater party is a get-together where guests are invited to wear their most tasteless Christmas sweaters. While it doesn’t have to include a contest, a little competition adds interest and encourages participation – especially if there’s a prize. And, as you’ll learn in this article, there’s little reason not to have a contest because it’s super easy to set up.

If you’re thinking about hosting your own ugly sweater contest, here are some ideas to keep in mind. At the end of the article, I’ve also included printables you may useful.

Invitations

Whether you’re going with paper invites, email, or just a signup sheet, your invitation should prominently mention the ugly Christmas sweater contest and any important information about it. If the contest is the main activity at your gathering, you may even want to call it an “Ugly Sweater Party” or something similar. Regardless, here are a few fun phrases you might want to use:

Join us for an ugly sweater get-together!

Eat, Drink & Be Tacky

Don we now our ugly sweaters

It’s the tackiest time of the year

Get ready to sleigh the competition at our ugly sweater contest

Of course, you don’t want to get too wordy, especially if you have other activities to mention such as a gift exchange. Keep in mind that you can always follow up with the people who RSVP, or drop your email address in the invite so they can contact you with questions.

Decorations

Sweaters aren’t the only things about Christmas that are tacky. Yuletide decorations are also known for being colorful, sparkly, and sometimes downright kitschy. I’ll bet you have a few such decorations sitting in your attic that you can mix and match – and mismatch – to create a decorating theme appropriate for the wacky tacky proceedings.

One must-have for an ugly sweater party is a selfie station. This could be a backdrop with sign saying “2025 Ugly Christmas Sweater Party” or something similar. You could even make props available for people to make their ugly sweater selfies even more hilarious.

Judging

You don’t have to get overly complex or formal with the rules – this is, after all, a lighthearted affair. That said, it’s worth putting some thought into exactly how the contest will play out. Consider recruiting a few people to be judges and having them rank their three favorite sweaters.

The winner could then be decided based on a simple points system:

See the end of the article for printable ballots you can use.

Prizes

Your contest should have some sort of prize, even if it’s just symbolic. To commemorate the winner’s victory, you could award a tacky trophy or a simple certificate (see below for one you can print out). Along with that, consider giving the winner a gag gift (Christmas sweater koozie?), gift card, or perhaps just some holiday treats.

If there are a lot of contestants, you may want to have multiple prize packages. In that case, you can simply award them to the top two or three finishers, or come up with different categories like “Most Creative” and “Best Homemade Sweater.”

Printables

As promised, here are some handy dandy printables for your ugly sweater contest. Just click the preview images to view/download the files. Please note that these printables are for personal, noncommercial use only.

First, here’s a sheet to keep track of contestants and their ugly sweaters.

Here are some secret ballots for the judges.

And here’s a prize certificate you can give to the winner. Just fill in the winner’s name, host’s name, and event date.