As December rolls in, so does the yearly flutter on a White Christmas, with major UK bookmakers once again posting odds on whether snow will fall at select cities and airports on 25 December 2025.
From Aberdeen down to London, bettors can take a festive punt on where those first snowflakes might land. So, how likely are we to get a White Christmas 2025?
Northern locations are, as ever, leading the pack, but this year's market has thrown in a few surprises, with international heavyweights like New York and Paris also featuring among the favourites.
So what are the real prospects of waking up to a blanket of white in the UK? Here's a look at the frontrunners in the betting, what officially qualifies as a "White Christmas," and how you can stake a wager on the holiday weather.
White Christmas Odds 2025
Aberdeen sits atop the odds (1/1 William Hill) for good reason given the Granite City has seen Christmas Day snowfall several times in the past decade, cementing its reputation as the UK's most likely festive winter wonderland.
In England, Leeds and Newcastle (2/1 with Ladbrokes) leads the pack with odds translating to 33.3% to 36.4% chance of seeing Christmas Day snow, while Liverpool and Manchester are priced a little longer.
Down south, though, Londoners dreaming of a storybook sprinkle will need fortune on their side. The capital (8/1 with Coral) usually hovers just above freezing, keeping any potential flurries stubbornly at bay.
| Location | Best Odds | Implied Probability |
|---|---|---|
| Aberdeen | 1/1 | 50% |
| Edinburgh | 7/4 | 36.4% |
| Glasgow | 7/4 | 36.4% |
| Leeds | 7/4 | 36.4% |
| Newcastle | 2/1 | 33.3% |
| Belfast | 11/4 | 26.7% |
| Liverpool | 7/2 | 22.2% |
| Manchester | 4/1 | 20% |
| Dublin | 4/1 | 20% |
| Bristol | 5/1 | 16.7% |
What is a White Christmas?
According to the Met Office, a "White Christmas" has a surprisingly simple definition: just one lone snowflake needs to be spotted falling anywhere in the UK at any point on 25 December. It doesn't have to settle, stick or blanket the streets, it just has to be seen. As a result, bookmakers set their odds with this generous criteria in mind.
For it to count officially, the sighting must come from one of the Met Office's trained observers or an approved automated weather station. This ensures the data is consistent, reliable, and suitable for the UK's long-term climate records.
Because the threshold is so low, White Christmases happen more often than you might imagine. 2024 was actually the first year since 2019 without a single flake recorded on Christmas Day. Even then, 2023, the "snowiest" year in that period, only saw 11% of stations report falling snow.
And in 2023, not a single station reported snow lingering on the ground afterward. You'd have to roll back to 2010 for the last truly memorable White Christmas: 19% of stations logged snow or sleet falling, and a massive 83% had snow lying, the highest ever recorded.
The Met Office uses an even tougher benchmark for a "widespread" White Christmas: at least 40% of its stations must have snow on the ground at 9 a.m. On the big day. That's only happened four times since the 1960s.
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When was the last official White Christmas in the UK?
Since 1960, the UK has only witnessed a genuinely widespread blanket of Christmas snow, meaning more than 40% of weather stations reported lying snow at 9 a.m., on four occasions: 1981, 1995, 2009 and 2010.
The most recent "official" White Christmas came in 2023, when 11% of stations logged snowflakes falling, even though not a single one recorded snow sticking. In the year before, 2022 delivered falling snow at 9% of stations, but again, nothing settled.
Both 2021 and 2020 also ticked the technical box for a White Christmas, with 6% of stations noting snowfall in 2021 and 4% in 2020. However, hardly any of it lingered, less than 1% of stations had snow on the ground in 2021, and only 4% did so in 2020.
As the Met Office put it: "The last widespread white Christmas in the UK was in 2010. It was extremely unusual, as not only was there snow on the ground at 83% of stations (the highest amount ever recorded), but snow or sleet also fell at 19% of stations."
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