DeBary Light the Night Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the DeBary Light the Night Contest and who runs it?

The Light the Night Contest is a holiday decoration competition organized by City of DeBary for homes across DeBary, Florida. It forms part of the city's Parks and Recreation special events calendar, which also stages the 4th of July Freedom Fest, Movie in the Park, Sweetheart Dance, Spooktacular Halloween Decorating Contest, Tree Lighting and Chili Cook-off, Christmas Parade, Winter Walk of Lights, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town and the Mom and Son Dodgeball Bash. Inside that slate, Light the Night turns residential front yards into the competing entries.

Where the ballot sits

The city hosts the entire program on its own web space at debary.org, under the Parks and Recreation special events pages. The contest page carries the judging dates, the voting instructions and the contact details below. An outside polling platform plays no part; a supporter deals directly with the municipality.

Contacting the organizer

The city lists its address as 16 Colomba Road, DeBary, FL 32713, and takes calls at 386-601-0206. Residents can stop by City Hall for more information about entering a display or taking part as a voter.

When is the DeBary Light the Night Contest judged, and which years did it run?

Confirmed years for the program are 2025 and 2026. The 2026 ballot names its judging dates outright: December 10 through 13, 2026. The same page puts the close of the run-up span at December 7, 2026, with displays up in the evenings leading into judging.

Older holiday material on the city's site points to an earlier appearance as well: the Holiday Events page carries a 2024 category list headed by Lights-A-Palooza, billed as "The brightest display that truly lights up the night." Named display categories therefore predate the current cycle.

Several facts stay off the page. The contest page does not print its category lineup for the 2026 round; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Homeowner entry and sign-up dates are absent too, and no per-person voting ceiling appears beside the instructions.

Reading the dates

Anyone planning a tour can treat December 7 as the last evening of the full display run and the 10th as the start of scoring. Everything outside that printed arc, from sign-up deadlines to how results are announced, stays with the city to publish.

How do fans vote in the Light the Night Contest?

Voting follows the instruction City of DeBary prints on its holiday pages: scan the code posted on a participating house and cast a fan favorite vote for that display. The wording reads verbatim, "Scan the QR code on participating houses to vote for your fan favorite!" Because the code sits on the house itself, a supporter has to be physically present, riding past the display rather than tapping through a list on a screen.

The ballot lives at debary.org under the /333/ contest path, so the whole exchange happens on municipal web space rather than inside a commercial polling app. The printed instruction involves nothing beyond the scan itself; the camera on a phone does the work.

Scanning at the house

In practice a supporter plans an evening route through the participating houses, stops within camera range of each lit display, points a phone at the posted code and submits the fan favorite choice the code opens. Displays stand ready through the run-up span, giving voters several evenings to make the rounds before scoring begins.

What the judges add

City of DeBary states that both official judges and the public will cast votes. The panel works the same December window, scoring displays while public scans come in, so a display competes on decoration quality and on gathered support at the same time.

How does this contest sit beside other Florida fan votes?

Florida pages on this site cluster around reader polls run by publishers: the Best of Florida Awards carries a statewide title, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll and the Best of Orlando ballot carry big-city ones, and Best of Tallahassee and Best of the Bay follow the same reader-poll pattern. The 2024 "BEST BUDS" Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest rounds out the set with a pet calendar angle.

Light the Night stands apart from that cluster in three ways. Its organizer is a city government rather than a publication, its entries are private homes rather than businesses, and its deciding window is pinned to a December stretch printed on the ballot. Where a reader poll gathers clicks from wherever its audience sits, this contest asks supporters to stand in front of a lit house in DeBary and scan the code mounted there.

For a supporter weighing where to spend effort, the practical difference matters more than the labels. A statewide reader ballot rewards broad digital reach, while the DeBary ballot rewards presence on specific evenings in specific yards. Rather than scrolling a long ballot, a supporter here reacts to what is lit up in front of them.

How can a supporter give a favorite display a stronger shot?

Support here is physical before it is digital. A display collects fan favorite votes only when somebody stands near the house and scans its code, so the strongest pushes begin with turnout: neighbors, coworkers and local groups willing to ride past during the December evenings. Presentation counts just as heavily, because official judges score the very displays the public is scanning.

Timing tools help too. Creating a website account on debary.org lets a household manage notification subscriptions, which is how locals catch the city's event announcements early enough to plan route nights before the displays light up. City of DeBary prints no policy covering outside voting help in this contest, so anyone weighing paid support should read the ballot's own terms first; tactics that transfer to scan-at-the-house ballots sit in this guide to earning more votes.