Sydney Christmas
We want to help you promote your Christmas events, shopping nights, decorations and activities. These can include:
- interactive Christmas experiences, decorations and stunning visual spectacles
- Christmas promotions, markets and exclusive in-store experiences
- family friendly Christmas activities
- Christmas themed menus and promotions
- late night Christmas experiences.
Apply by 5pm Sydney time on Friday 30 September.
Benefits
Events that meet our event submission guidelines will feature on What's On and may also appear in Christmas promotional material including:
- Christmas editorial articles on What's On and City of Sydney News
- Christmas features in our weekly What’s On newsletter in November and December with 31,000 subscribers
- Christmas posts on the City of Sydney Facebook page (286,000 followers), Twitter (275,000 followers), Instagram (190,000 followers), LinkedIn (31,000 followers) and YouTube (13,900 subscribers) featuring photography or video from your event
- Featured location on the Christmas lights and decorations walk in the Sydney Culture Walks app
- Media releases and pitches to mainstream media
- Advertising totems (also known as triffids) located in several outdoor locations throughout the city centre and surrounding local area
- Outdoor, radio and digital advertising in November and December.
How to become an associated event
Complete steps 1, 2 and 3 by 30 September.
- Create an account and log in to What’s On.
- Follow the event submission process to provide all the details for your event. If there are some aspects of your event you do not know yet, such as price, please add placeholder information. Details can be changed later. On step 2 of the submission process please select the Sydney Christmas program.
- Once you have entered all the information press ‘Save for later’. Do not submit your event for review at this stage. Upon pressing Save for later, we’ll be able to see your event details and will have received your information. Your event will appear in your dashboard as a draft and will not be published.
- We’ll review your event and let you know if it’s OK to be included in the Sydney Christmas program.
- Once you hear from us, you can check all the key details about your event and submit your event for review in the What’s On dashboard. Your event will receive a final check by the What’s On team before being published.
- We’ll incorporate your event into the Sydney Christmas webpage and where appropriate, use the details from your listing to feature on marketing materials about the festival.
If you took part in Sydney Christmas last year and already have a What’s On listing for the same event, please update this instead. Once you’ve made the update to your existing listing please ‘Save for later’ as described in step 3 above.
Next steps
- We’ll review your event and let you know if it’s OK to be included in the Sydney Christmas program by 14 October.
- If accepted, your event will need to be published by 11 November.
- Events received after the dates above may still be published and be part of the program but may miss out on marketing opportunities.
Top tips
1. Prepare your listing in advance
- Browse the site to get a feel for what works.
- Check the event submission guidelines.
- Get your copy and information together. See Anatomy of an event listing for an outline of all fields.
2. Choose a hero image – photographic images work best!
- Photos are best for your main image. We cannot publish images with text, post logos, clip art or flyers.
- You can upload flyers and logos as additional images.
- Find image specs and more in our Knowledge base.
3. Tag your event 'Christmas' and select the program 'Sydney Christmas'
- On step 2 of the submission process you can add up to 5 tags to describe your event. Be sure to include Christmas as one of your tags.
- On the same step you can also select a program. Please choose Sydney Christmas.
To find out more or for help with your submission, please contact us.
Important notes
- All event content selected for use across the Christmas marketing campaign is at the editorial discretion of the City of Sydney.