Uptown Holiday Window Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Uptown Holiday Window Contest and who runs it?

The Uptown Holiday Window Contest is a holiday decorating competition for storefronts in the Uptown business district of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. The Mt. Lebanon Partnership, the community organization behind the corridor's promotions, invites businesses along Washington Road to dress their windows for the season and then hands the verdict to the public: during the voting period, community members can visit participating businesses throughout Uptown and cast their vote online for their favorite display.

The ballot is not farmed out to a polling service. It runs on the Partnership's own website, in the events section of mtlebopartnership.org, next to the official rules for the Uptown Holiday Window Decorating Competition. The organization's office at 710 Washington Rd, Pittsburgh, PA 15228 sits on the very strip the displays decorate, which is about as local as an organizer gets.

Quick facts

Which editions have run, and what are the 2026 key dates?

Two cycles of the program are documented: 2025 and 2026. The current page announces that the contest "is back for 2026!", and that pair of seasons marks the window vote as a recurring piece of the Uptown holiday calendar rather than a one-time promotion.

The 2026 schedule is spelled out in unusual detail. Businesses had to enter by Friday, November 20, complete their displays by Wednesday, November 25, and public voting opened on Small Business Saturday, November 28. The official rules then run community voting from Saturday, November 28 through Sunday, December 15, 2026, with winners announced on Saturday, December 19.

Gaps remain. The Partnership publishes no breakdown of display categories or judging groups for the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Prize values are likewise absent even though prizes are part of the competition, and nothing on the contest page spells out voter or entrant eligibility.

How does a supporter actually vote in the window contest?

The mechanic is built for a December stroll. The contest page carries a map of participating businesses together with the online voting link, so you can tour the Washington Road storefronts first and then vote online, or simply open the page at home and choose from the map.

One constraint shapes everything: the official rules state that participants may vote once per day throughout the voting period. Across a window stretching from late November into mid December, that daily reset turns a single click into a habit, and habits are what move a neighborhood ballot.

The daily rhythm

Because the allowance refreshes each day rather than each visit, supporters who fold the vote into a routine, pairing it with a morning coffee order or an evening walk past the displays, collect the maximum influence the rules permit without doing anything unusual. Phone browsers reach the same page, which matters for anyone voting on the go.

Nothing on the contest page mentions a voter account or a login wall; the voting link on the page is the entire doorway.

How does this ballot sit beside Pennsylvania's other public vote contests?

Pennsylvania readers' choice ballots are plentiful, and this program's closest cousins on the site are all publication-run polls: Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine), Best of the 'Burgh, Best of Berks (Berks County Living Magazine), Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style), Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice and Erie Reader Best of Erie.

The differences are structural. Those ballots span whole cities or counties and many categories, while the Uptown contest has a single subject, decorated holiday windows, and a footprint of one business corridor. They are run by magazines chasing reader engagement; this one is run by a community partnership promoting its own storefronts, on the partnership's domain rather than a media property's.

It is also seasonal in a way reader polls are not: the whole thing exists for a few weeks around the holidays, tied to Small Business Saturday, and then goes quiet until the next winter. A voter who enjoys this format but wants something with a longer runway would look at the larger Pennsylvania ballots listed above.

For a business owner, the practical consequence is focus: one window, one corridor, one audience of neighbors, rather than a citywide popularity ladder.

How can a business rally more votes for its window?

A storefront has two levers this format hands it free: foot traffic and repetition. Since the contest asks community members to visit participating businesses throughout Uptown, every customer who walks in for a gift or a coffee is a potential voter, and a small sign at the counter pointing to the contest page converts that visit into a ballot. The once per day allowance then turns those visitors into repeat supporters for the rest of the window.

Outside help sits in territory the organizer has left largely unexplained. The official rules pin down the once per day limit, and no separate guidance on paid promotion or vote services appears beside them, so any business weighing that route should start from what the rules actually say. Background reading for both paths is on site: the online votes guide covers organic mobilization, and the award votes page describes paid support for ballots shaped like this one.