Exit Board Game Advent Calendar Review - An essential buy for board gamers!
The 2026 Exit Advent Calendar from Kosmos will be the 6th time we have enjoyed easily the best advent calendars we've ever had. Challenging, fun, witty and miles better than some limp chocolate or an overpriced branded calendar. We think this is AN ESSENTIAL Christmas purchase for anyone who loves board gaming.
Exit: The Magic of Christmas Advent Calendar: Quick Summary
Score:
8/10
Number of Players:
1-5
Time to Play:
24 days
An essential Christmas purchase for anyone who loves board games. Exit: The Magic of Christmas lives up to the quality and challenge of the previous five calendars. Each puzzle is considered, fun and will stretch your mind. Way better than chocolate!
What we loved:
The puzzles are fun and range in difficulty
The ENTIRE box and its contents are involved in solving the puzzles, including sneaky, hidden QR codes
It's inventive, creative, and every year provides 24 days of brilliant puzzling
The stories are pretty good - if a little bonkers
Anyone can take part, and any number of people can join in at the same time
Easily the best advent calendars we've ever had
What could be improved:
Sometimes the box material quality, compared with the complexity of its construction, means it can fall apart or the windows can run into each other.
Occasional typos
Lots of reading, which may not appeal to everyone and may pose accessibility issues
A Board Game Advent Calendar With Bells On!
Thank you to Chaos Cards for sending us this copy to review. We really appreciate partners helping us this way, since board games are expensive. This has not influenced our opinion of the Exit Advent Calendar; however, we recommend getting your games from Chaos Cards, as their service is excellent. If you do, then we receive a small commission that doesn't affect your price, but helps us continue running the site.
Every year, come late November, you remember Christmas is coming, and it's time to get the family their advent calendars. Sometimes it's Cadbury's and the chocolate is OK; sometimes it's Tesco's, and it's the worst chocolate ever; maybe you splash out on an overpriced Molton Brown or even Gucci calendar and find the prizes are just the items they couldn't sell during the year. Whichever calendar you choose, there is always a very high risk of getting to the 24th and being very disappointed.
But what if you could find a calendar that let you play a board game every day? What if it was an escape room over 24 days that got your brain working and didn't involve unpleasant calories? What if it brought the family together rather than requiring multiple calendars to stop squabbling?
Exit: Advent Calendars are now in their 6th year, and they are pretty unique. Plus (early spoilers), they are amazing, and we think you should rush out and buy one! Each year, you are faced with 24 puzzles that interlink and involve every aspect of the box, art, and even things like the barcodes. You solve a Christmas story that combines Santa, Yetis and this year, potentially a grumpy green chap who looks like Jim Carrey.
The 2026 Exit: Advent Calendar is called The Magic of Christmas, and as with other editions, the plot puts you in the middle of a Christmas mystery that requires you to escape, discover clues and solve puzzles each day.
Unlike our other reviews, that's all we're going to say about the story! This is one of those games where the joy is in the solving and the discovery, so no spoilers here. This does mean that we'll be a little more abstract than normal in describing the game, but hopefully you'll see that the core feelings you'll take away will be that it's fun, really clever and absolutely the perfect gift for a board game lover in the run-up to Christmas.
If you are new to these calendars, then alongside the 2026 one we are reviewing here, there are also five others that you can dive into and enjoy!
How does the Exit advent calendar work?
There are a number of key components that make Exit advent calendars work. The first is the storybook. Each day, a different element of the story is revealed in the book; you don't read ahead, and each page should be torn out. Often there are clues in the way the story is written or in the artwork on the page; sometimes you will even need to cut or fold the paper to make the rest of the puzzle work. It's a clever hinge that holds the game together.
Alongside the rule book is a very short instruction book on how to use the calendar and then helpful hints if you get absolutely flummoxed. Once you have read the introduction to the story and learned how to play, you find the first window in the calendar. Simply pop it open and then take out the contents. There will usually be some riddle cards, sometimes some props and aids and then the picture inside the window. All of these combine with the storybook to spell out the puzzle, you just have to solve it!
When you think you have the answer, you input it into the decoder table; this gives you a combination of directions and three symbols. Follow the arrows across the face of the calendar and match the symbols to the window you land on. If they don't match, you need to head back to the riddle and try again. If they do, congratulations, you've just found tomorrow's puzzle!
The beauty of these advent calendars is in their simplicity, playing each day is very easy to learn and to teach, which frees up your brainpower for finding the next day's window.
The puzzles, riddles and solutions
Without going too in-depth into each day's puzzle, you will often be posed a linguistic or visual riddle that will require elements from around the box as well as on the riddle cards. Usually a solution presents itself with a little lateral thinking and a good search around the artwork and the text. Anything and everything could hide the key to the solution, so a patient, methodical approach is key.
For instance, one puzzle early on in the game needed three numbers from a basket. The text provided a very obscure clue until we hunted around the box and finally found additional pictures that linked to the card, once we had that we could find the numbers and try them in the decoder. We were stumped for a while, but it was immensely satisfying when we finally found the missing pics.
As you go further into the calendar and you get closer to the final door, the puzzles get harder, often referring back to previous days or solutions that require deeper digging into the fabric of the box itself. The final day's puzzle is always a blinder, the door is never where you think it will be on first solve, and they are a great climax to 24 days' worth of furrowed brows.
Exit advent calendar: The pros and cons in detail
What we liked:
This is a very enjoyable game. It has a real range of different ways to test you, without ever feeling tiresome or monotonous. The Exit range of games has always had the knack of being difficult without being frustrating and this advent calendar is no different. The gradual increase and variety of difficulties means some days you will solve a puzzle in minutes and feel very smug as you do, and others you will spend more time searching and frowning as you calculate the answer. Now six years in, Kosmos have really got their eye in and understand how to make each day enjoyable. We might have laboured the point a little, but we'll restate it - this is infinitely better and more sustainable than small, cheap chocolates in a packet that's full of plastic.
We love hunting around the box for clues and answers; in fact, when this year's calendar arrived, we immediately started pointing out pictures and areas of the text that we thought were going to be important. Check under every flap, page, piece of art, everywhere, because the answers are built into the fabric of the game. Incredibly clever designing by Inka, Emely and Markus Brand.
Every year the stories make us laugh, we usually read them out loud before opening the window, and can't help creating voices for each character. The 2025 calendar ended up with the spaceship driver sounding like Dr Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb! The plot might take a back seat to the riddles, but watching the story make literary backflips as it shoehorns the puzzles in is very funny.
Solving an Exit advent calendar is a great team sport. Our brains all work differently, so where you might be stuck on a window, someone else will find it easy. There are enough separate components and hands-off solving to ensure everyone will be able to get involved without feeling sidelined. We save our windows for the end of each day after work, TVs off, phones away and calendar out, ready to solve!
Without doubt, the best advent calendar available on the market right now (including compared to the LEGO calendar, and we love that too!).
What we would improve:
One of the downsides of the construction of the calendar is the way the components can jump across windows, or the box becomes frayed the closer you get to the 24th. We've often found that as the days tick by, the cardboard becomes weaker, some of the riddle cards will fall behind partition walls and it can get a little messy. This is mainly be because you're turning the box over and over to find solutions, which means all the internal gubbins are constantly on the move. The windows will become bent and hard to keep closed too, especially after puzzles that involve backtracking your way through previous days to find particular additional clues you may have missed. In previous calendars, we've also had solutions missing, but the customer support has been excellent each time, and the more of these Kosmos have produced, the better the quality control has been.
Each Exit advent calendar is story based, which means there is a lot of reading. If you struggle with dyslexia, or if reading chunks of text just isn't your thing, they you may struggle to connect with the game. If you're working as a team, however, if you leave the reading to others, then you'll find the puzzles are mostly visual, with some wordplay. It's very colour-based at times too, so those with colour blindness may also struggle occasionally with the riddle cards. Overall however, it's a very accessible game.
Exit the board game advent calendar summary
Forget the disappointing chocolate, don't buy multiple advent calendars full of plastic, and avoid mountains of hand cream samples you wouldn't have bought anyway.
This year, try an advent calendar that is exciting, interesting, brings the family together and completely recycles when it's finished.
You won't be disappointed with an Exit Advent Calendar
Expansions and Related Games
Expansions
There are now six Exit advent calendars in total, and because they are evergreen in nature, you can play all of them, regardless of their age. Starting with The Mystery of the Ice Cave (2020), followed by The Hunt for the Golden Book (2021), The Silent Storm (2022), The Missing Hollywood Star (2024), The Intergalatic Race (2025) and now The Magic of Christmas (2026).
Related Games
Kosmos are well known for their escape game puzzler Exit series. There is a huge range of one-shot Exit games, which make for amazing Christmas stocking fillers, with many only costing around £10 or so. They range in difficulty, which is easy to see from the number of dots on the front of the box. There is even a Lord of the Rings version!
Other Games You May Like
The Intergalactic Race
You wander into a seedy bar and two minutes later you're wrapped up in a great intergalactic race! Your ship might well be a rust bucket, and your pilot seems to love food more than flying, but you've got brains and you nearly know how to use them. The 2025 Exit Advent Calendar was a puzzling classic.
Exit Advent Calendar: Frequently Asked Questions
Can these advent calendars be replayed after they are completed?
The nature of the puzzles means that the boxes become used up, the windows no longer work properly, and you know the answers to the riddles! This isn't a game that can be regifted, simply because, to solve the clues, you will at times need to destroy or cut up items in the game.
Are the materials in this advent calendar sustainable or recyclable?
Everything in an Exit: Advent Calendar box is recyclable. The main components are on card; there is a very small amount of plastic used for components, and it's a comparatively sustainable board game.
How difficult are the puzzles in this advent calendar?
This is rated as a Beginner version of Exit. This means that the riddles are challenging but not impossible, and it's very accessible for all members of the family. From time to time, you may get stuck, and the storybook has a comprehensive hints section to help give you a nudge in the right direction.
Transparency Notice
This review contains affiliate links to Amazon, Zatu Games, and Chaos Cards. When you purchase through these links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support our independent reviews while keeping our content free. We only recommend games we genuinely believe in.