Downtown Holiday Decorating Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Downtown Holiday Decorating Contest is and who runs it

The Downtown Holiday Decorating Contest is a December program run by Louisville Downtown Partnership, an organization based in Louisville, Kentucky. It is not a reader's-choice magazine ballot and it does not sit on a national voting platform. The contest lives on the organizer's own website, at louisvilledowntown.org, where the registration page carries the guidelines, the deadlines and the entry form in one place.

The shape of the program is unusual among Kentucky ballots. Businesses and property owners decorate and light up their buildings, a panel drawn from board members of the Louisville Downtown Management District and the Downtown Development organization judges the displays, and a separate public category called City Choice lets downtown residents, employees and guests vote for their favorite decorations on Louisville Downtown Partnership's Facebook page. The ballot is therefore half juried and half public vote, which is a different structure from the pure popularity contests most Kentucky cities host.

Entry is free, and the guidelines ask participants to light up their building or storefront in some way, since the program is explicitly about decorating and lighting downtown for the holiday season. Businesses entering City Choice must also provide a photo of the exterior of their building to the Partnership.

The dated history of the Louisville decorating contest

Three seasons of the contest are confirmed, in 2023, 2024 and 2025, all anchored to December. The organizer's own pages describe the 2025 edition as completed, which is the clearest sign the program has run as a recurring December fixture rather than a single promotional push.

The 2025 cycle is the one with printed dates. Registration forms were due November 28, 2025 to confirm a spot on the ballot. Displays had to be completed and ready for judging by December 1, 2025. The voting period ran from December 1 through December 12, 2025, winners were announced on December 15, 2025, and business displays were encouraged to stay up through December 31, 2025.

Several facts about the ballot are not printed on the registration page. Louisville Downtown Partnership publishes no category list beyond City Choice, no per-person voting limit for the Facebook vote, and no day-by-day calendar for the next season; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The registration page is the place where each new season's guidelines appear, so anyone planning a 2026 display should read that page fresh rather than assume the 2025 dates repeat.

What the printed dates do establish is a tight rhythm: registration closes at the end of November, judging and voting run in the first half of December, and the displays themselves carry the season through the end of the month.

How a supporter votes in City Choice today

The public side of the contest is the City Choice category, and the mechanic is specific to this program. Downtown residents, employees and guests vote on their favorite holiday decorations on Louisville Downtown Partnership's Facebook page. That means the vote happens inside Facebook, not on the registration page itself, and a supporter needs to reach the Partnership's page during the voting window to take part.

The window in the most recent edition ran December 1 through December 12, so a supporter who wants their favorite storefront to win has roughly twelve days to act, and the organizer's guidelines set no ceiling on repeat participation by a single person during that stretch.

On the participant side, the steps are equally concrete. A business or property owner registers before the deadline, completes the display so it is ready for judging on December 1, lights the building or storefront, and submits an exterior photo to Louisville Downtown Partnership to appear in City Choice. A business that skips the photo step does not appear on the public-vote side at all, which makes that single submission the most consequential action a participant takes.

Because the vote runs on Facebook, supporters who want to rally colleagues or customers should point them at the Partnership's page directly during the window, since the registration page is where the guidelines live but not where the voting happens.

How this ballot sits beside its Kentucky neighbours

Among the Kentucky ballots listed on this site, reader's-choice programs dominate: Best in Kentucky covers the whole state, Best of Bowling Green and Best of Lexington KY serve their own cities, Chevy Chaser Best of Lex runs through a Lexington publication, Best Places to Work in Kentucky is a workplace award, and the BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards cover Louisville theatre. Every one of those is a category-driven popularity ballot with a large nominee roster.

The Downtown Holiday Decorating Contest is a different animal. It is run by a downtown management organization rather than a publisher, its nominees are buildings and storefronts rather than businesses in named service categories, its judging is partly in the hands of district board members, and its public vote happens on the organizer's Facebook page rather than on a dedicated ballot form. A Louisville business cannot substitute a win here for a win in a citywide readers poll, because the audiences and the mechanics barely overlap.

Where a participant puts in effort differs too. This contest asks for a decorated, lit-up storefront and a single exterior photo, and it concentrates all of its voting into early December. The statewide and citywide ballots linked below run their own calendars and their own category lists, so a participant in one is not automatically a participant in the others.

Readers comparing programs can start with Best in Kentucky for the statewide picture or BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards for the other Louisville-side ballot.

Strengthening support for a Louisville storefront display

Support in this contest flows through two channels, and each rewards different preparation. The juried side is decided by board members of the Louisville Downtown Management District and the Downtown Development organization, so display quality, lighting and completeness by December 1 are what count there. The public side is the City Choice vote on Louisville Downtown Partnership's Facebook page, where downtown residents, employees and guests pick their favorite, so reach inside the downtown community matters most.

A participant who wants more City Choice support should first confirm the exterior photo is on file with the Partnership, because a business missing that step is not on the public ballot at all. Then the work is ordinary community mobilization: telling staff, customers and neighbours when the voting window opens, and keeping the display lit through December 31 so it stays visible while people decide.

The organizer's published guidelines say nothing about outside voting help, purchased or otherwise, so participants weighing that option should read the rules on the registration page first and the broader discussion in our votes guide. Winning in a contest whose public vote runs on the organizer's own Facebook page is never something any outside service can promise.