GCHQ Unveils 2025 Christmas Challenge Blending Schoolchildren’s Creativity with Spy-Crafted Puzzles

In a highly anticipated annual tradition, GCHQ has released its 2025 Christmas Challenge, a fusion of seven complex brainteasers crafted by the agency’s codebreakers and striking card designs created by schoolchildren from across the UK. For the first time, children’s artwork appears alongside puzzles built by intelligence experts, delivering a unique blend of imagination, STEM learning, and real-world problem-solving. 

With references to classic codebreaking heritage and a modern push to inspire future cybersecurity talent, this year’s challenge aims to unite families, students and puzzle enthusiasts in a shared festive mission: uncovering a hidden celebratory message.

Key Takeaways: GCHQ Christmas Challenge 2025 Highlights

• GCHQ released its annual 2025 Christmas Challenge on 10 December, featuring seven puzzles built to test maths, analysis, lateral thinking, creativity and codebreaking skills.
  
• Schoolchildren’s designs appear for the first time, selected from over 500 entries submitted nationwide.
  
• Three winning students—Haoran, Mariia and Amelie—designed the card front, each from a different school stage and recognised for creativity and embedded puzzle elements.
  
• GCHQ’s experts, led by Chief Puzzler Colin, created the back-of-card puzzle set, intended to encourage teamwork and diverse problem-solving approaches.
  
• The challenge reflects GCHQ’s real-world intelligence work, promoting STEM curiosity and inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
  
• Last year’s challenge saw over 140,000 downloads, and the agency expects similar nationwide participation in 2025.
  

Schoolchildren Join Forces with Cyber Spies for a New Kind of Christmas Challenge

For decades, puzzles have played a central role in the culture of GCHQ, from wartime codebreaking to modern intelligence analysis. But 2025 marks a significant shift: children’s creative interpretations of GCHQ at Christmas are now part of the official challenge.

More than 500 school pupils submitted artwork imagining the intelligence agency on Christmas Day. They were instructed to incorporate hidden codes, visual puzzles, and imaginative elements—a task that mirrors the analytical creativity used by intelligence teams daily.

Director GCHQ Anne Keast-Butler, alongside the agency’s Chief Puzzler Colin, judged the designs and selected winners from three school stages. Keast-Butler emphasized the importance of such initiatives in encouraging young people to explore STEM pathways and envision potential careers in cybersecurity and intelligence.

Meet the Students Behind the Winning Designs

Haoran – KS3 / Year 8, Wilson’s School, London

Haoran’s detailed hand-drawn card integrates festive symbols with neatly hidden puzzle elements. Judges called the work “a standout blend of art and puzzle skill.”

Mariia – KS4 / Year 10, The Henry Beaufort School, Winchester

Vibrant, clever and featuring a festive cat, Mariia’s entry impressed judges equally for its artistic quality and puzzle depth.

Amelie – KS5 / Year 12, South Wilts Grammar School, Salisbury

Digitally crafted and rich with layered visual riddles, Amelie’s design rewards close inspection. Judges noted, “The longer you look, the more you see.”

These designs appear on the front of the official 2025 Christmas Challenge card, bringing youthful imagination into a national puzzle tradition dating back to 2015.

Seven Fiendish Puzzles Set by GCHQ’s In-House Codebreakers

Complementing the students’ artwork is a fresh set of puzzles engineered by GCHQ’s puzzle specialists. Inspired by the agency’s analytical culture, the puzzles mirror tasks encountered in intelligence operations.

According to Chief Puzzler Colin, no participant should expect to find them all easy. The seven tasks are formulated to require:

• Codebreaking
  
• Mathematical reasoning
  
• Analytical strategies
  
• Lateral and creative thinking
  
• Perseverance
  

Colin stresses that each puzzle taps into different strengths, encouraging groups—families, classmates, colleagues—to collaborate and combine perspectives.

A Festive Robber, Hidden Words, and A Final Secret Message

Among the complex tasks is a standout narrative puzzle featuring a robber navigating a house of interconnected rooms. Each room holds a letter, and movement is restricted by colour-coded doors and directional arrows. The robber cannot pass through two doors of the same colour consecutively and cannot travel against an arrow. Eventually captured by police, solvers must identify how he was acting.

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Additional challenges include searching for a seven-letter word without repeated or alphabetically adjacent letters, and decrypting a coded message beginning with:

“PIGMIHM DRP MHSIAMA QDMPM MBNDQ UITL-FMQQML…”

Hidden four-letter words, red-highlighted clues and layered ciphers amplify the difficulty, ensuring participants engage in deep analytical thinking.

Why GCHQ’s Annual Challenge Matters More Than Ever

GCHQ emphasises that puzzles are not just festive fun—they are embedded in the agency’s operational DNA. Director Anne Keast-Butler highlighted that the skills needed to solve these challenges align closely with the attributes required to protect the UK from hostile states, terrorists and criminal threats.

Keast-Butler noted her hope that this challenge will inspire the next generation to consider cybersecurity careers, adding that some of these school participants “might be solving our own puzzles in the future.”

Nationwide Participation Expected as Downloads Surge Year After Year

Last year’s challenge drew over 140,000 downloads across schools and households. With the introduction of student-designed card covers, GCHQ anticipates an even higher level of engagement.

Schools are encouraged to let pupils take the puzzles home to solve with friends and family, promoting collaborative problem-solving through the festive break.

Participants are also invited to join GCHQ’s Top Secret Puzzle Club on Instagram for bonus hints and additional challenges, and to share their progress using #GCHQChristmasChallenge on social media.

A Festive Celebration of Creativity, Codebreaking and Community

As GCHQ unites the imagination of schoolchildren with the analytical precision of intelligence experts, the 2025 Christmas Challenge demonstrates how puzzle-solving can inspire connection, curiosity and national participation. 

By blending youthful creativity with expert craftsmanship, this year’s challenge stands as a reminder that problem-solving is not only at the heart of GCHQ’s mission but also a skill that can spark excitement, teamwork and opportunity across all age groups.

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