Starbucks Just Revealed Its Holiday Cup Designs for 2024

Retailers barely let spooky season pass before decking the halls in holiday cheer: sparkly snowflakes here, wrapping paper there, red and green foil-wrapped candy everywhere in between. But as for when the season officially begins, some might say it’s the day Starbucks holiday cups appear.

Starbucks has announced that its holiday cups are on their way, so pack up the pumpkins and start hanging the garland!

What do the Starbucks holiday cups look like?

Courtesy Starbucks

Every year since 1997, Starbucks has featured a different design (or set of designs) on its holiday cups. For 2024, there will be four new paper cup designs, plus one plastic cup design for cold drinks. The theme is “Merrier Together,” and while past designs showcased a signature red hue, the cups lean into shades of green this year.

Here’s a peek at each new cup:

• Joyful Connection: Concentric half-circles full of color collide with other concentric half-circles full of different colors to form circles all across this cup. The design is meant to evoke the mechanical arm that cools the roasted coffee beans in a giant circular drum.
• Lyrical Landscape: The wavy, rounded patterns of alternating colors could almost be the scales on a mermaid’s tail, though Starbucks says the shapes evoke “the green rolling hills where coffee is grown.”
• Siren Chorus: A series of vertical stripes are cinched and distorted to create ornament-like shapes, almost as you’d see in a magic eye painting. For this one, Starbucks says it has drawn inspiration from “the patterns made from raking coffee beans in the sun.”
• Warm Wishes: A series of bubble-like shapes with interconnected circles (almost like a Venn diagram) represents the idea of coming together with mugs of coffee.
• Holiday Cold Cup: Nothing too revolutionary on this cup—just a series of “festive charms,” or shapes that look a bit like ice crystals. Still, something a little bit out of the ordinary for lovers of iced shaken espresso.

It makes sense that Starbucks wants to compare these designs to the coffee-making process. In an open letter published in September, new Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol announced that he wanted to bring the brand back to its coffee house roots by streamlining the ordering process, trimming down the menu and showcasing the coffee quality. “We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart—a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas,” Niccol wrote.

Courtesy Starbucks

When do Starbucks holiday cups come out?

The new Starbucks holiday cups drop this Thursday, November 7, at locations nationwide.

Though it hasn’t been officially confirmed, Starbucks did leak its holiday menu for 2024. You’ll soon be able to fill these festive new cups with a Peppermint Mocha, Sugar Cookie Almondmilk Latte and more.