Light Up New Jersey 2025 Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Light Up New Jersey 2025 is and who runs it

New Jersey 101.5, the talk radio station registered as WKXW, runs the Light Up New Jersey 2025 Contest on its own website at nj1015.com. The program invites residents across New Jersey to submit photos of their festive holiday light displays, and the public then votes for a favorite. The winning display earns its owner a $500 cash prize, and the station announces the result on Dec. 23.

The ballot sits in the best-of vertical: like a readers' choice poll, it hands the decision to the audience rather than to a judging panel. Unlike the year-round best-of ballots in the state, this program is seasonal and built around a single holiday question, so the whole contest compresses into the December stretch.

Because the station hosts the ballot itself, supporters deal with one publisher from start to finish. The same domain that carries the station's news and streaming content also carries the voting form, and no third-party contest platform sits between the voter and the ballot.

One more framing point: this is a photo contest as much as a vote. Entry means sending in a picture of a decorated home, so how the display reads to strangers scrolling the ballot matters alongside the size of the network behind it.

The dated record for Light Up New Jersey

The holiday program has confirmed runs in 2023 and 2025. The 2023 run carried its own ballot page at nj1015.com/light-up-name-2023/, pitched with a call for residents to show the station their brightest, most beautiful holiday displays. The 2025 edition runs at its own address on the same domain and follows the same December shape.

In the live 2025 cycle, voting runs through Dec. 23 at noon, and the $500 winner is announced that same day. The station has not printed the exact opening date for photo submissions or for voting; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two other facts are missing from the page the station publishes. It carries no category list, so a supporter cannot tell from the ballot whether displays are grouped in any way. It also prints no eligibility rule for who may submit a photo or who may cast a vote, beyond the stated daily limit.

With editions in 2023 and 2025, a 2026 run is the natural next step, and the station's contest hub is where a new edition would surface first. Nothing on the 2025 ballot announces a 2026 date, so anyone planning an entry for next December should watch the station's own pages rather than assume the calendar repeats on its own.

How a supporter votes on the Light Up New Jersey ballot

The mechanic is deliberately simple, and the station states it plainly on the 2025 ballot: you can vote once per day. A supporter opens the ballot at nj1015.com/light-up-new-jersey-2025/, scrolls the submitted photos of decorated homes, picks a favorite, and casts a vote for that display. No registration step is described on the page, and no category navigation is printed, so the ballot reads as a straight choice among the entries.

The daily limit is what gives this program its shape. A supporter who wants one display to win should plan to return every day the ballot is open, because each calendar day brings a fresh vote. Steady repetition, not a lone click, is what the once-a-day rule rewards, and that is equally true for the family whose house is entered and for a neighbor backing it.

The page sets no published rule on how votes are verified beyond the daily limit, and it names no second round or runoff. The practical picture is a single open stretch ending at the Dec. 23 noon close, with the announcement following the same day. For a supporter, that means the whole effort goes into the daily habit and into getting others to adopt it, rather than into timing a push around stages the ballot does not describe.

Where this ballot sits among New Jersey vote programs

Public-vote programs are thick on the ground in New Jersey, and this one's nearest neighbours on this site are six other ballots: the Asbury Park Press Readers' Choice program, Bergen & Morris Top Dentists, the Best of Bergen Community's Choice Awards, the Best of Jersey Shore Contest, Best of New Jersey, and the Jersey Bites Monmouth County Readers' Choice ballot. Every one of them answers to its own publisher, and none of them is a holiday lights contest.

What separates Light Up New Jersey from those neighbours is scope and subject. The readers' choice ballots and Best of New Jersey run wide category slates across businesses and services, while this ballot asks a single seasonal question about decorated homes. Bergen & Morris Top Dentists narrows by profession and by county pair; the Jersey Bites ballot narrows by county and by food scene. Light Up New Jersey narrows by subject matter instead: houses lit up for the holidays.

It is also the only program in the group run by a radio station rather than a print or digital publisher. That shapes how it reaches people, since the station can promote the ballot through its on-air content and its news site at the same time. For an entrant, the practical difference is audience: the ballot is promoted to a statewide broadcast audience, not to a single county's readers, which is why a display from anywhere in New Jersey can compete for the $500 prize.

Strengthening support for a display on this ballot

The once-per-day rule means a display's counted total grows through repeat visits, so the most effective honest push is a rhythm: ask family, friends and coworkers to vote the day you enter and to come back each day after. A photo that shows the display lit and close up does more work than a dark or distant shot, because undecided voters choose from the pictures on the ballot itself.

No rule on outside help appears on this ballot, so read the station's own contest terms before spending money on any support. For tactics that fit any public vote, see how to get more votes online, and for what paid support involves in award-style ballots, the service page describes the mechanics without promising any outcome. No vote service, ours included, can promise victory in a public ballot, and the organizer's daily limit applies to every vote counted on the ballot regardless of where a supporter comes from.