How to Make a Digital Advent Calendar: A Free Maker, Canva, Slides or an App, Compared

A calendar that lives on a phone can be made several ways, and each one trades something for something else. Below they sit side by side, each described from the tool’s own page, with the limits of every route stated, including the limits of the maker on this site. For what goes behind the doors, there are 24 digital advent calendar ideas and the door-by-door plan in what to put in a digital advent calendar.

The maker here is free: 24 doors, no account for you or for the person who opens it, one link to send, and an email address used once for the link that edits or deletes the calendar.

The short answer

The dividing line is the date lock. An online maker, an app and the business products open a door on its day; an image and a slide deck show everything at once, so the surprise depends on the person resisting the urge to scroll ahead.

Route 1: an online maker (what "no account" means)

Here is how the maker on this site works, in five steps:

1. Pick a background. Six background images are offered; the calendar’s 24 doors sit on the one you choose.
2. Enter an email address. It is used once, to send you a secret link that edits or deletes the calendar. There is no account; the link in your inbox is the key, so keep that email.
3. Fill the doors. Each door holds a short text and one of: an uploaded image, a YouTube video, a GIF or a link. Videos are links to YouTube, not uploads.
4. Share one link. The calendar goes out by WhatsApp, email or a message; whoever opens the link sees the calendar, and a door opens on its date. You can keep the calendar private or share it publicly.
5. Delete it when you are done. Calendars stay online at least through January and can be deleted at any time from the edit link.

Every route has limits, and this one’s are plain. The maker hosts no video files (a video is a YouTube link), and the link itself is what keeps a calendar between you and its person, so it goes to that person and not to a group. A teachers’ tools site that reviews makers lists the email step as a registration; it is not one, since no account is created and nothing is logged into.

MyAdvent is the other free maker with a long run. Its page, read October 25, 2026, lists a free plan with photos, text, voice recordings up to 20 seconds, YouTube videos, AI-written texts and up to 30 AI images, calendars up to 90 days, and embedding; the one-time Pro at 5.99 euro and Pro+ at 11.99 euro per calendar, valid three months, add a password, music, video uploads, animations and comments; it says no account is needed, offers iOS and Android apps with German hosting, and claims more than 300,000 calendars made. Advientos is free with a sign-up, lets you choose the number of windows, takes a photo and a message per window, videos and games, and can make a PDF to print for a chocolate box.

Good to know A calendar link is only as private as it is hard to guess, and anyone who has it can open it. Send it to the person it is for, not to a group, and do not post it where strangers read. A password, where a product offers one, closes the door that a forwarded link opens.

Route 2: Canva, Kapwing or any image editor

A designed calendar is a picture: 24 numbered squares on one image, each with a message, a photo or a QR code that points to a link. Kapwing’s guide, from November 2018, walks through its template: replace the wrapped gifts with your own images, publish, and download the result. The French teachers’ site that reviews makers describes Canva as thousands of templates for printable calendars and QR codes.

The route suits a calendar you will print or post as one image, and a calendar for a person who will not scroll ahead. It has no date lock: the whole image is there on December 1. A QR code per door points to a link, which means 24 links hosted somewhere else, each of them open from day one. For a photo calendar, an image editor is the right tool for the design and a maker is the right tool for the dates; the photos can go behind the maker’s doors as image doors.

Route 3: Google Slides or PowerPoint

A slide deck makes a calendar for a room rather than a phone: a cover slide with 24 numbered shapes, each linked to its own slide, shown on a classroom board one morning at a time. The teachers’ tools site suggests that each pupil prepares one box of a class calendar, which a shared deck makes easy, since every pupil can own one slide.

The limit is the same as the image: a shared deck shows every slide to anyone who opens it, so the surprise holds only while the teacher drives the board. For a class that opens its calendar together, that is fine; for a calendar sent home to families, a maker with dated doors and one link does the job, and the page on a classroom advent calendar with one door per school day sets out the 22-door version for a term that ends before Christmas.

Route 4: an app from the store

Advent App is an iOS app by PINTUMO UG, free to download, with in-app purchases of $2.99 for an ad-free calendar and $7.99 for the pro version; it offers 20 languages, recipients need no account, and on the free tier they unlock doors by watching ads. The app route means the maker installs something, and the free version puts an ad between the recipient and the door; a web maker needs no install on either side.

Route 5: a team, an intranet or a shop

Türchen is a business product with Business, Premium and Enterprise plans, a 10-day trial, GDPR and German hosting, and prices on request; its plans include password protection. PollUnit offers free pre-made designs, daily participation forms with winners, and 24 interface languages. Miro’s advent calendar template is a whiteboard with 5, 10 or 25 days and locked reveals, for a team that already works in Miro. Embeddable, a widget vendor, lists a free plan with 25 tokens a month and paid plans from $19 a month, and names a dedicated product at 1,490 euro. A small team without IT needs none of these: the page on a company advent calendar without IT runs one on a free link.

Video doors: what YouTube and Vimeo allow

A video for one person, say a good-morning message filmed in the kitchen, goes on YouTube as Unlisted. Google’s page says unlisted videos “can be seen and shared by anyone with the link”, that viewers need no Google account, and that an unlisted video stays off your channel page and out of search results unless someone adds it to a public playlist; private videos cannot be shared by link at all.

The platform’s own words On ads: embedded videos “may show skippable or non-skippable in-stream ads”, the ads follow the same settings as on youtube.com, “only YouTube and the video owner will earn revenue from ads on embedded videos”, and “there’s no way to directly turn off ads on embedded videos only”.

That is why no calendar, including this one, can promise an ad-free video door. What a maker can do is embed through youtube-nocookie.com, Google’s privacy-enhanced mode: views in that mode are not used to personalise the viewer’s YouTube experience, and the ads shown are non-personalised. On Vimeo’s free plan the privacy settings are Public and Private only, and Vimeo says private videos cannot be embedded anywhere; Unlisted, password protection and domain controls need a paid plan. The page on YouTube in an advent calendar covers the rest, including what “made for kids” changes.

Photos: whose pictures you may use

Your own photos need no licence. For a background or a door image from a stock site, the licence pages read October 25, 2026 say: Pexels photos are free to use with no attribution required, but unaltered copies may not be sold and people in the pictures may not be shown in a bad light; Pixabay content may be used and adapted without attribution, but not sold or distributed on a standalone basis, and content with recognisable brands may not be used commercially; Unsplash images are free for commercial and non-commercial use without permission, but may not be sold without significant modification or compiled to replicate a competing service.

A shared Google Photos album is a door in itself: Google’s page says anyone with the link can view the photos and add to the album. Photos of other people’s children are a different question, answered by the school rules on photos of children behind a door.

Sharing the link

A finished calendar is one URL. The maker offers WhatsApp and email sharing from the calendar page, and the link pastes into any message. For a person who prefers paper, a QR code printed on a card points to the same link; the page on sending an advent calendar by WhatsApp, email or QR code shows what the recipient sees on each.

In the tool The maker’s doors hold text, an image, a YouTube video, a GIF or a link, and each door opens on its date. There is nothing to install on either side: you make the calendar in the browser, and the person opens the link in theirs. When the 24 doors are filled, the calendar goes out as one link by WhatsApp or email, and the edit link in your inbox opens it for changes until you delete it.

Put it in a calendar

Start from one of the six templates, each a finished calendar you copy and change: for a partner, a child, grandparents, a class, a team or a friend abroad. Or start from an empty one: Create your calendar, pick a background, and fill door 1 tonight.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I make my own digital advent calendar for free?

With an online maker: pick a background, enter an email address once for the edit link, fill 24 doors with text, images, YouTube videos, GIFs or links, and send the calendar as one link by WhatsApp or email. The whole thing takes an evening if the videos are already recorded.

Do recipients need an account to open it?

Not with the maker here: the site’s page says anyone can open the calendar directly through the link. MyAdvent’s page also says no account is needed; Advent App’s listing says recipients need no account, though on its free tier they watch an ad to unlock a door.

Can I make an advent calendar in Canva?

Yes, as an image: a teachers’ tools site describes Canva’s templates for printable calendars and QR codes, and Kapwing’s template works the same way, with your images in place of the wrapped gifts. The image shows every door at once; nothing opens on a date.

How can I make a photo advent calendar online?

Put one photo behind each door of a maker as an image door, so each photo appears on its day, or share a Google Photos album as a link door, which anyone with the link can view and add to. Stock photos for backgrounds come with the licence lines above.

Is there a digital advent calendar app?

Yes. Advent App on iOS is free with in-app purchases of $2.99 and $7.99, offers 20 languages, and asks no account of recipients. A web maker needs no install; that is the difference, not the doors.

Will the video doors show ads?

If the video is on YouTube, ads can play inside the embedded player; Google says they follow the same settings as on YouTube, cannot be turned off for embeds alone, and pay YouTube and the video’s owner. Google’s privacy-enhanced embed domain makes the ads non-personalised.

How long does an online calendar stay up?

The maker here keeps a calendar online at least through January, and the edit link deletes it at any time. MyAdvent’s Pro purchase is valid for three months. Whatever you want to keep for next December, keep where it lives: the videos on YouTube, the photos in your album.

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