Short answer: Starbucks has not announced a 2026 holiday cup date yet, but it lands the same way every year. The cups arrive with the holiday menu in the first week of November. In 2025 the menu and cups launched on Thursday, November 6, so plan on early November 2026 and a Red Cup Day roughly a week after that.
If you work behind the bar, you already know the drill. The green aprons come off, the red aprons go on, the peppermint syrup shows up in the well, and the plain white cups get swapped for the seasonal print. Here is what is confirmed, what is a safe bet for 2026, and the cup history behind it.
When do Starbucks holiday cups come out?
Every year the holiday cups drop alongside the holiday drink menu, and that menu has consistently launched in the first week of November. The 2025 launch date was November 6, with the cups revealed the day before. Red Cup Day, the promotion where a handcrafted holiday drink gets you a free reusable red cup, followed on Thursday, November 13, 2025.
Starbucks has not published a 2026 date as of mid-2026. Based on the pattern, expect the 2026 holiday cups in the first week of November, with Red Cup Day the following week. Treat any specific 2026 date you see floating around as a guess until it shows up on Starbucks' own newsroom. We will update this page when the official announcement posts.
Starbucks holiday cup history at a glance
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1997 | First holiday cup, designed by Sandy Nelson. A jazz-themed gift-wrap print in jewel tones, not red. |
| 1999 | Cups went predominantly red for the first time, setting the template that stuck. |
| 2011 | Cups carried augmented-reality codes that unlocked holiday characters through a Starbucks app. |
| 2015 | Plain red cups with no seasonal art drew a manufactured "war on Christmas" backlash online. |
| 2022 | 25th anniversary of the holiday cup, nodding to the original gift-wrap style and the Peppermint Mocha's 20th year. |
| 2025 | Four designs inspired by barista aprons: Coffeehouse Plaid and Merry Apron Strings, each in green and red. |
| 2026 | Not announced yet. Expect early November, following the same launch window. |
Sources for the history above: the official Starbucks holiday cup archive and Wikipedia's Starbucks Red Cup entry, which compiles the year-by-year record.
The first cup was not red
People assume the red cup has always been the holiday cup. It has not. The 1997 debut came from designer Sandy Nelson and looked like patterned gift wrap in deep jewel tones. Red did not take over until 1999, and once it did it never left. That candy-apple red is now the actual signal that the season has started for a lot of customers, which is exactly why the 2015 plain-red version got so much attention. There was nothing removed from it. It had never carried religious imagery in the first place. The story was noise, but it proved how much weight people put on that cup.
What the 2025 cups looked like
The 2025 lineup leaned into the coffeehouse itself. Starbucks ran four designs pulled from the aprons baristas wear: Coffeehouse Plaid in green and red, and Merry Apron Strings in green and red, the latter showing ribbon tied into bows like apron strings. Each cup had a white tag on the back where baristas write a name or a short message. Cold cup versions of the apron-strings design shipped too. If 2026 follows recent form, expect a similar count of two to four designs revealed a day or two before the menu goes live.
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FAQ
When do Starbucks holiday cups come out in 2026? Starbucks has not confirmed a 2026 date, but the cups have launched in the first week of November every recent year. The 2025 launch was November 6, so plan on early November 2026.
When was the first Starbucks holiday cup? 1997. It was designed by Sandy Nelson and used a jazz-themed gift-wrap print in jewel tones. The cup did not go predominantly red until 1999.
What is Red Cup Day? It is a one-day promotion where buying a handcrafted holiday beverage earns you a free reusable red holiday cup. In 2025 it fell on November 13, about a week after the menu launch.