Advent of Code launches it’s 11th year with dramatic changes. The coding challenge event drops from 25 days to 12 days, and the global leaderboard is removed. Creator Eric Wastl stated that he chose sustainability over creator burnout.

Reduced Days#

According to the 2025 Advent of Code announcement, It takes ton of his free time every year to run Advent of Code, and creating puzzles takes majority of that time, So he decided to reduce the puzzle days into 12 days from 25 days to avoid creator burnout. This doesn’t break the spirit of the challenges it refines it.

Removal of global leaderboard#

Eric stated that global leaderboard was one of the largest stress to him and the infrastructure. People took things too seriously, using AI to solve problem as quick as possible even solving in minutes and some even resorted to things like DDoS attacks to prevent the leaderboard from updating. What started has a fun tradition for each christmas became an ever-growing problem. So Eric decided to drop the global leaderboard and people can use their private leaderboard to compete with their friends.

Community Reaction#

The Community also welcomes this change and in platforms like Reddit and Hacker News , Community welcomes this move and seems grateful that their December tradition continues.

Go check out Advent of Code 2025 and join the adventure of helping elf’s and making this christmas a better one.