Best tea advent calendars for festive brews this December

This has almost everything you could need in a tea advent calendar. It’s in a neat box with subtle festive decorations and proper doors to open each day. Plus, it contains two teabags for each day, so you can look forward to an afternoon cuppa, if you don’t feel like sharing. All this and it doesn’t cost a fortune, either.

Traditionalists may balk at the lack of breakfast blends and black tea, but the calendar features what Twinings call superblends and soulful blends instead. These have names such as metabolism, sweet dreams, immune support and quiet mind, and we loved the idea of choosing these teas to match our mood.

The teas are delicious, too. Some of our favourite ones included ‘sleep’ (spiced apple, vanilla and camomile), ‘glow’ (strawberry, cucumber and aloe vera green tea with biotin) and ‘pause’ (raspberry, hibiscus and blackberry). The ideal way to unwind and take it easy this festive season.

Housed in a small navy-blue box emblazoned with festive pictures and tied with a red ribbon, this is a lovely-looking calendar. It opens like a box and each door is decorated with an old-fashioned teapot. Better still, it can be closed and retied after opening, to keeping it looking good even when half the doors have been ripped open.

Inside, there’s a good festive selection of teas, although all but one are repeated twice. They’re also all listed inside, which ruins the surprise a little. Happily, the tea is Fairtrade, non-GMO certified, and organic, while a percentage of each purchase goes to Global’s Make Some Noise campaign, which supports small local charities throughout the UK.

A black-tea connoisseur may balk at the selection of flavoured teas, but they’ve certainly got a festive feel, with seasonal flavours including gingerbread, super star anise, punchy peppermint and festive spice. All come in loose leaf pyramid bags and are ideal for hunkering down with in front of a Christmas film.

Bird & Blend was the first company to ever create a tea advent calendar, back in 2016, so, it’s no surprise the brand’s offering is still one of the best you can buy.

It comes in a brightly decorated book-style box, featuring a cube for each day, which is handy if you want to take the day’s teabags to work. Each cube has two bags inside and all are best-selling or fan favourite blends, alongside the odd preview of Bird & Blend’s new teas for 2025. Better still, the calendar is 100 per cent plastic-free, and one tree is planted for every tea advent calendar the company makes.

Inside, you’ll find everything from strawberry lemonade to dark choc chilli chai flavours. Helpfully, each mini-box also details the ingredients, caffeine content and if you should serve with milk. There’s even gingerbread chai, mince pie and mulled cider flavours, to give your brew the requisite Christmas makeover, too.

This tea advent calendar oozes elegance. It’s made by Mariage Frères, which has been supplying tea to high-end hotels and delicatessens in Paris since 1854. The brand has more recently opened a flagship store in London’s Covent Garden, which claims to have the longest wall of tea in the world.

Some of the brand’s best-loved blends are included in this calendar (including one for Christmas Day itself) and all are exceptional quality. Each one comes in a handcrafted cotton muslin bag, making it feel like a real cut above your usual boring brew.

There’s no list of what’s included on the box, so every day is a surprise. Inside, there’s a mix of largely black, green and white teas. Each one is labelled, albeit entirely in French – dust off your GCSE language skills or visit the Mariage Frères website, if you want to know exactly what’s in each bag. Some options include ‘rainbow rhapsody’ (pink white tea with notes of citrus), ‘locombia Colombia’ (green tea with pineapple morsel) and ‘birthday in love’ (Darjeeling with rose petals and jasmine), for some seriously fancy festive cuppas.

Ditch the supermarket teabags for a posher cuppa in December, with this elegant-looking calendar from the world’s most awarded luxury tea brand. Newby uses the finest tea leaves possible in its blends, with only those picked in the prime season (between March and July) making the cut.

The calendar features an illustration of ice skaters in London on the outside, and opens up to reveal 24 individual drawers, meaning the calendar can be reused in future. Every drawer contains a whopping four individually wrapped teabags, making it great for sharing or lasting into the new year. The teabags range from classic black teas, including Ceylon, Assam and Darjeeling, to various flavours of oolong tea, green tea and fruit teas, such as summer berries, jasmine blossom and Moroccan mint. Our boring old morning tea just won’t feel the same come the new year.

If you live for opening a door each morning in December, this advent calendar is not for you. Rather than a traditional calendar, the teabags come attached to a seasonally decorated cardboard wall hanging. Each individually wrapped teabag is numbered, helping you count down to Christmas, but they aren’t concealed, so you’ll be able to see exactly which tea you’ll be drinking each day.

It’s a great collection of teas, though. All are organic and include some classic herbal tea flavours. Instead of madcap Christmas flavours, you’ll find lemon, ginger and manuka honey, elderberry and echinacea, and (our favourite) morning berry. Just the thing to soothe frazzled festive nerves.

If you’re buying a tea advent calendar for someone who can’t function until they’ve had their morning cuppa, this is the one to go for. Festive flavours and curious Willy Wonka-style brews are given a wide berth, as this elegant and fully recyclable calendar focuses on top-notch black teas instead. Each individually wrapped teabag is a classic Whittard blend or exclusive single-origin selection and almost all could be slurped at breakfast, without leaving you feeling like you’ve missed your daily caffeine hit. There are two teabags behind every door, so you can share with someone else (or save one for the post-lunch slump). Inside, you’ll find Irish breakfast, Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Kenya and Chelsea breakfast. There’s an odd flavoured bag thrown in – including masala chai and English rose – but nothing too extreme to frighten the traditionalists. We especially liked the aromatic Christmas tea, with notes of citrus and spice, to get us feeling extra-festive.

Regular tea drinkers might be devoted to one brand, but this calendar is a great way to sample some non-scary flavours alongside the gold-standard classics.

The calendar comes from Yawn, which is based in Derbyshire and has been selling loose leaf and craft coffee since 2017. They now sell five different tea advent calendars, including a tea explorer calendar, a Christmas tea for two calendar plus ones including only single origin or caffeine-free blends. This one is devoted to breakfast brews and has plenty of versions to add pizzazz to your morning tea and toast, including Yorkshire breakfast, Scottish breakfast and even London breakfast (a malty tea with hints of bergamot, if you’re wondering).

There are also some seasonal surprises to lure you away from your standard tea with milk, such as cocoa candy-cane, eggnog, Santa’s milk and cookies and, our favourite, chocolate cake, which mixes black tea with cocoa beans and cocoa husks.

Keep your eyes peeled for a golden ticket inside, too, as you could win some prizes – Yawn will reveal winning ticket numbers every day from 12 December.

Our only gripe is the flavour of the tea is not mentioned on the teabag packaging itself, so you’ll need to refer to the list on the back of the calendar to discover which one is behind every door.