Seasons Guide: Collecting Every Seasonal Upgrade

By Matextrem · Published October 6, 2026

Seasons add limited-time upgrades, cookies and achievements to Cookie Clicker. Many of them are permanent CpS boosts once collected, so a bit of planning each run pays off. This guide covers what each season gives you and the fastest order to collect it all.

How seasons start

Each season turns on by itself around its real-world date: Valentine's Day in February, Business Day on April 1st, Easter in spring, Halloween at the end of October and Christmas in December. If you play around those dates you get the season for free.

The heavenly upgrade Season switcher lets you start any season yourself, whenever you like. It adds a seasonal biscuit for each season to your store. Buying one starts that season for 24 hours and ends whatever season was running. The price of these biscuits goes up each time you use them during a run, so start with the season you need most.

Why seasonal upgrades matter

Most seasonal items are ordinary upgrades: cookie upgrades that add a percentage of CpS, or special effects like cheaper buildings or more frequent golden cookies. Because they are regular upgrades, they reset when you ascend and need to be collected again. A family of heavenly upgrades (Starsnow, Starspawn, Starterror, Starlove and Startrade) makes each season's drops easier to get or the season itself stronger, which speeds this up in later runs.

Christmas

Christmas has the most to collect. First, buy A festive hat to unlock Santa. You can then pay cookies to level Santa up through 15 forms, from a festive test tube to Final Claus. Each level unlocks a random Christmas upgrade in your store, many of which boost CpS or reduce building prices.

During Christmas, reindeer fly across the screen every few minutes. Clicking one gives cookies and has a chance to drop one of seven Christmas cookies, each a CpS upgrade. Reindeer stay on screen only briefly, so this part rewards active play.

Christmas tips

• Level Santa to Final Claus as early in the run as you can afford.
• Reindeer appear more often with Starsnow and some Santa upgrades.

Halloween

Halloween's seven cookies drop from wrinklers, so you need the Grandmapocalypse running (buy One mind from the research line). Each wrinkler you pop during Halloween has a chance to drop a cookie: Skull, Ghost, Bat, Slime, Pumpkin, Eyeball and Spider.

The fastest approach is to let a full set of wrinklers attach, pop them all, and repeat. If you normally play without wrinklers, Halloween is a good reason to turn the Grandmapocalypse on for a while. Our Grandmapocalypse guide explains how to start and stop it, and the Wrinkler Calculator shows how much the pops are worth.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's is the simplest season. Its heart biscuits are bought straight from the store in a fixed order, and each one unlocks the next: Pure heart biscuits first, ending with Prism heart biscuits. There is nothing to farm. As long as you can afford them, a single 24-hour Valentine's period is enough.

Easter

Easter is the slowest season to complete. Eggs drop at random when you click golden cookies and pop wrinklers, and there are 20 to collect, including rare ones. Some are simple cookie bonuses, while others have strong effects:

• Golden goose egg: golden cookies appear 5% more often.
• Faberge egg: buildings and upgrades are 1% cheaper.
• Wrinklerspawn: wrinklers return 5% more cookies.
• Omelette: makes other eggs drop more often. Worth getting first if you can.
• Century egg: a CpS bonus that grows the longer the current run lasts.

Rare eggs drop far less often than common ones, so the last few take the longest. Running wrinklers and popping them often gives you many extra rolls. The Mind Over Matter dragon aura also makes drops more common. See our dragon guide.

Business Day

Business Day is the April Fools' season. It mostly changes the look and names of things with a corporate theme. Its heavenly upgrade, Startrade, makes golden cookies a little more frequent while it runs, but there is little to collect, so most players skip it once the other seasons are done.

A good order for each run

1. Christmas first. Santa's upgrades include price reductions that make everything after it cheaper.
2. Valentine's next. It is quick, and the heart biscuits are a guaranteed CpS boost.
3. Halloween once the Grandmapocalypse is running and you have wrinklers.
4. Easter last, since it takes the longest. Leave it on while you play normally.
5. Finally, switch back to Christmas or no season, depending on whether you want reindeer for the rest of the run.

Seasonal cookies and eggs also count toward achievements, which add milk for your kitten upgrades. Use the achievement tracker to see which seasonal achievements you still need.