When will Holiday Baking Championship air? Release date, what to expect and more explored

Food Network is bringing back the holiday flair with Holiday Baking Championship season 12. The show will premiere on Monday, November 3, 2025 at 8/7c on Food Network. 

The cooking reality show is a yearly competition with many spin offs airing through the year. Some of these shows include Spring Baking Championship, Halloween Baking Championship, Kids Baking Championship, Summer Baking Championship and Wedding Cake Championship.

This season will feature 12 bakers who will compete to win a cash prize and a chance to feature in Food Network Magazine. Holiday Baking Championship season 12 will also bring viewers behind-the-scene action, taste tests, hot takes and much more.

Holiday Baking Championship Season 12: Format, judges, episode synopsis and more

This year’s holiday special will feature 12 bakers who will uniquely face each other. Host Jesse Palmer will invite these competitors into a holiday village.

This holiday village comes with a working coffee shop, general store and even a town hall. 

The teams would be divided for the first time into two teams named Naughty and Nice. 

These teams then take on tasks such as Chrismukkah Platters, Snow Day Desserts and Naughty Elf Desserts. 

The winner will take home the title of Holiday Baker Champion and will be featured in Food Network Magazine and will receive a cash prize of $25,000. 

Holiday Baking Championship 12 will be hosted once again by Jesse Palmer.

Jesse has been hosting the Food Network’s popular show since season 5 when he took over from the previous host Bobby Dean. 

Duff Goldman and Nancy Fuller will return as judges on the show. 

This season, however, popular Holiday Baking Championship host Carla Hall will not make an appearance.

Kardea Brown will replace her.

Hall judged the show for five years and neither Carla nor Food Network has issued a statement regarding her departure.

Hall is a part of another cooking reality show on Food Network titled Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking. 

The show will premiere on November 2, a day before the telecast of Holiday Baking Championship. 

It is speculated as reported by The U.S. Sun that Hall is busy filming Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, which can be the reason for her bidding adieu to the show. 

Viewers can follow the hashtag #HolidayBakingChampionship across the Food Network socials for exclusive behind-the-scenes content. 

They can also enjoy holiday hot takes with the judges, taste tests, holiday Two Truths and a Lie and lot more. 

Food Network has released a synopsis for episode 1 of this season on their official website. 

The episode is titled Welcome to the Holiday Village.

In the episode Jesse Palmer welcome 12 bakers, where they are divided into the Nice and Naughty team. 

In each bake, the judges would decide the top dessert from each teams and the team that gets the maximum points will win best overall dessert. 

The winning team would then be safe in the elimination challenge and the losing team would have to let go of one baker. 

For the first preheat test challenge, the Nice team will make warm and toasty desserts whereas the Naughty team gets to make cold and frosty delicacies. 

The host Jesse Palmer will then ask each team to create an edible holiday village which would include a sweet treat from each baker. 

Judges then get to decide which contestant heads back home.

Stay tuned for more such updates.