You may have seen it at Costco. Instead of the typical, utilitarian pallet of cans, there's a special Red Bull offering for the encroaching holiday season. A giant rectangle, decorated with festive stylings pulled straight from the "gives you wings" advertisements.
The 2026 Red Bull Advent Calendar promises 24 days of modest caffeine boosts, pairing the brand's signature 8.4-ounce cans in a wintery display to keep you chugging through the stressful hours of planning family gatherings and racking your brain for gift ideas. That includes 10 different flavors, ranging from the classic base to the seasonal variants that always turnoutprettywell.
Let's run through the pack and see what we've got, ranking those flavors from least to most satisfying.
Not ranked: Original, Sugar Free and Zero
We all know the base Red Bull flavors. We all like them, or else we wouldn't be talking about the brand's advent calendar. Let's just get right to the weirder, wilder variants.
7. The Apple Edition: Fuji Apple & Ginger: C
Ginger is a great addition to most juicy drinks (and cocktails. Especially cocktails). This smells appropriately orchard-based with a little root spice behind it. The two flavors work well together, but they also create a drier finish rather than leaning into that juice. It lives up to what's advertised on the can, but eventually gets a little tiresome to drink. I'm happy this only hits 8.4 ounces at a time.
6. The Iced Edition: Iced Vanilla Berry: C+
This smells aggressively like an energy drink, replete with the classic Red Bull "crushed-up Smarties" tang at the end. The berry is vibrant, sweet and inviting.
It's tangy and acidic, with more than a little cotton candy vibe going for it. It's got a slightly medicinal middle after that sharp opening, but that quickly fades into a sweet, almost creamy finish thanks to that vanilla. It's a bit too busy, but at 8.4 ounces it's not a problem. I just don't think I would have tagged this as vanilla berry if given a blind taste test. I can't shake that carnival dessert sugar cloud that opens up each sip.
5. The Festive Edition: Arctic Berry: B-
I came in thinking this would be a lot like the Iced Edition. Instead, it's got a fuller flavor with less sweetness and acidity. The berries take on a bigger role, blasting you with a blueberry/raspberry blend that's softer but still aggressive -- it is Red Bull, after all.
It settles in at the back of your tongue rather than the front, tasting a little like carbonated Gatorade in the process.
4. The Coconut Edition: Coconut Berry: B
It pours a lovely shade of Windex blue. The smell off the top is mostly Red Bull, with little coconut to be found. The first sip unleashes the island fruit with a healthy dose of the nebulous berry that pops up all over this Advent calendar. That makes it more of a unique twist on berry drinks than a typical Red Bull, but it's still a soft, pleasant opening that leads you to a familiar tangy finish.
3. The Peach Edition: White Peach: B+
It smells appropriately peachy -- not quite at gummy ring levels and with a bit of the promise of biting through crisp, fuzzy skin. The body fulfills that promise; juicy, not-quite-authentic peaches with a crisp, acidic finish that puts it back firmly in Red Bull territory. It's tangy and refreshing, easy to come back to with each sip.
2. The Sea Blue Edition: Juneberry: A-
The Sea Blue Edition pours a deep violet. Huh.
The juneberry is light and sweet without the acidic tartness of some of the other berries in this mix. It's a blend of blueberry and grape, rich and interesting. Each sip gives a deep, rich profile that lasts through the moment it clears your throat. The carbonation helps snap that off, but it's not as tangy as other Red Bull flavors. That makes it a bit of an outlier, in a good way.
1. The Winter Edition: Pistachio & Berries (sugar free): A-
Do pistachios and berries go together? It smells like they do, though there's an undeniably "RED BULL" current that wafts upward from the glass behind its sweet, nutty opening.
The pistachio here is incredibly well handled. It's not overpowering, but you get those nut flavors -- sweet, juuuuuust a bit savory -- before light berries and a familiar acidic tang finish things up. The berries aren't overpowering and exhausting like some of the other flavors here. It pulls off a balancing act that, remarkably, marries nuts and Red Bull in a way that doesn't just work, but tastes genuinely great. Though a little fatigue sets in by the end of the can, this is one of my favorite Red Bull variants yet.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Red Bull Advent Calendar 2026: Every flavor this year, ranked
