If you have any questions regarding any of these contests, please direct these either to the main contest announcement thread here on the Bulbagarden Forums, to the individual threads for each contest (linked below), or to the #bulbamas2025 channel on our Discord. FAQs can also be found in those threads.
Best of luck to everyone, and may the biggest Pokéfans win. Happy holidays, everyone!
After a long 4 year absence, this fan favourite contest makes its long awaited return. Canari will be your guide as a trail of riddles will lead you on a merry chase all around Bulbapedia as you look for some Colorful Screws! Each one you encounter will lead you to another page, just click on it when you find it, where Canari will assist you in unlocking the object's secrets! Each time you're successful, you will recieve a letter and the clue to the next location. Make sure you keep a note of everywhere the riddles are sending you, you're going to need 'em!
When you've made your way through all the riddles, you'll need to unscramble the letters to create a word or phrase that's related to Pokémon (you may or may not have to add punctuation in addition to the letters provided). Once you have your answer to the word scramble, you will need to submit the list of Colorful Screw locations, the top secret passwords, each letter you obtain, and the answer to the letter scramble with the submissions form. Once you submit your answer, you won't be able to edit it, so make sure that you're sure of your answer before submitting!
The Scavenger Hunt will continue until 11:59pm (PST), Wednesday December 31st, 2025. After that time, we'll select a total of ten winners at random from everyone who managed to complete the Scavenger Hunt within the allotted time. There's no prizes for finishing quicker, so you'll have plenty of time to puzzle out each riddle!
How well do you know your fellow Pokémon fans? If you've been watching us on social media, you might have seen how we've been posting the rankings for the top and bottom Pokémon on Bulbapedia each month. What we'd like you to do now is to give your best guess at what you think will be the top and bottom Pokémon on Bulbapedia for all of 2025!
To participate in this debut contest, head over to this online form and fill in it in according to which Pokémon and artticles you think received the most and least visits on Bulbapedia over the entire course of 2025. Given the year isn’t over yet, we don’t know the rankings ourselves yet, but you can make a more informed guess by checking out the information we've released on page rankings over the past 11 months.
Once the contest concludes at 11:59pm (PST), Wednesday December 31st, 2025, we’ll randomly pick ten winners from those who scored highest in their guessing. You'll want the right Pokémon in as close to the right spot as possible if you want to get full points. You can find full details on how entries will be scored in the contest thread. While accuracy in spelling is important for the contest, we'll be manually checking entries and using our discretion where typos may appear; we won't be too harsh if you forget that there's two Ls in Tranquill!
If you're the kind who typically needs a bit of help with some of our trivia related offerings, maybe this contest will be more up your alley. The FAQs on Bulbapedia and around the rest of Bulbagarden are getting a bit long in the tooth, and we'd like to ask for your help in bringing them up to speed! Yes, that's right, you could win just for asking us questions about how things work here on Bulbapedia and Bulbagarden!
To participate in this contest, head over to this online form and list out your frequently asked questions. We're looking for questions which people might realistically ask, and which we can actually provide an answer to that would help others. The idea of frequently asked questions is that they're frequently asked, so it's not an issue at all if you've had the same idea as someone else!
After the contest winds up at 11:59pm (PST), Wednesday December 31st, 2025, we'll select ten winners at random from all people who have submitted at least one valid and reasonable question.
Prizes
The winners from each of these three main contests will receive a Pokémon Center Gift Card to the value of $70 USD / $99 CAD / £60 GBP (for winners in the United States, Canada, or United Kingdom), or an equivalent value in readily available Pokémon merchandise (for winners in other countries).
In addition to our three main contests, there's a few other activities we've got running this holiday season.
Rapidash Trivia
While the exact format has varied over the years, trivia events have become something of an annual Holiday tradition here at Bulbagarden. This year's Rapidash Trivia once again offers a battle of wits and speed as you test your knowledge of the Pokémon franchise in a real time contest where only the fastest will win! While this year's Rapidash Trivia won't offer cash value prizes, you can still win for yourself some event exclusive badges on the Bulbagarden Forums, and the Bulbagarden Discord server, with different tiers of badges depending on your performance across all the Rapidash Trivia rounds.
To participate in Rapidash Trivia, you will need to join the Bulbagarden Discord server prior to the start of the round. To take part in a round, make sure you're in the server and in the #rapidashtrivia channel when things are about to start. Due to antispam requirements, the Bulbagarden Discord server is configured to only allow people to join and speak if they've had a registered Discord account for at least 10 minutes, so if you're new to Discord make sure to register your account well in advance of the first round that you plan to take part in.
Once the round has begun, the Rapidash Trivia bot will start asking a series of questions randomly selected from a set of questions that we've prepared from information on Bulbapedia. 150 questions will be asked each round. To score points, you must type your answer in to each question as quickly as possible. The first person to answer the question correctly will receive 1 point. There are no points for second place, no wild cards, no buzzer beater three-pointers, so you have to be quick if you want to win it!
When the round begins, the Rapidash Trivia bot will give users a minute to prepare themselves. When a question is asked, you will have 45 seconds to answer the question. If no correct answers have been received after 35 seconds, a small hint will be given. When either a correct answer is received, or the 45 seconds are up, the bot will give users 15 seconds to rest and prepare for the next question. With 150 questions per round (plus tie-breakers, if needed), the longest a round can take is two-and-a-half hours (if somehow every single question went the full 45 seconds without a correct answer, or only got answered right on the buzzer). From our experience with Rapidash Trivia in previous years, we expect most rounds will be finished in less than an hour, and potentially not even half that if people are quick on the draw.
You can find the schedule for the twenty regular rounds that we'll be running in the contest information thread. Additionally, bonus "Flash Fire" rounds may also be run on-demand at the sole discretion of the Bulbagarden @Discord Moderator team, depending on staff availability to oversee the rounds.
For budding authors, our forums are hosting a Writing Roundtable, featuring our friends in the Writers' Workshop (and Avalugg)!
To participate, write a short story (less than 5,000 words) based on one or more of our themes: City Secrets, Trick or Treat, or New Year, New Me. Once the writing period concludes on at 11:59pm (PST), Wednesday December 31st, 2025, you canspread the love by reviewing another entrant in the contest before 11:59pm (PST), Sunday January 25th, 2026, to complete the roundtable!
Participants who complete both the writing and review aspects, or review at least 3 stories in the roundtable, will receive an event exclusive profile badge on their Bulbagarden Forums account:
Please refer to this thread for additional rules, and also use that thread to post a link to your entry after you've posted it to the Writers' Workshop!
To participate in this collab, simply submit artwork of a Pokémon or Trainer of your choice as a holiday themed cookie! Please see the rules here for details on how to submit, image dimension requirements and how to get credit for your submission. Your submission could be physical art, digital art, clay, pixel art, fabric, or really any kind of creative media.
The deadline for submissions is 11:59pm on December 23rd (PST), when all the entries will be collated into a single huge artwork!
