Follow Santa On Christmas Eve 2025 (Via NORAD & Google)

Follow Santa on Christmas Eve in 2025 with NORAD and Google with real-time maps, tracker tools, and festive amusement.

Google and NORAD have teamed up to let families follow Santa’s 2025 holiday Eve travel route in real time and with live maps as well as arriving estimates, game and even educational activities. No matter if you prefer NORAD’s classic radar-style experience, or Google’s zany Santa Village, both options make waiting for Santa into a fun holiday tradition.

Santa’s 2025 World Tour Goes Live

Santa’s annual flight around the globe is described as a single-night trip around the globe, with children (and many adults) looking forward to seeing when the sleigh will arrive at their region of the globe. 

Two major trackers are available in the coming year, including: well-known Norad Santa Tracker as well as Google’s Santa Tracker website and application.

The map of NORAD tracks Santa when he starts his journey at the International Date Line in the Pacific beginning with New Zealand and Australia. 

Google’s tracker also begins at the easternmost time zone and displays Santa dispersing gifts from one region to another until he finishes his journey to South America.

NORAD Santa Tracker: A Defense-Side Tradition

The NORAD Tracks Santa program has been in operation for over six decades and is now an essential part of the holiday season for numerous families. 

It began in 1955 when a misprinted telephone number on an advertisement for Sears advertisement triggered phone calls to Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) instead of Santa.

Col. Harry Shoup instructed staff to give “Santa’s location” with each child, beginning the tradition that NORAD continues to maintain today.

Screenshot from noradsanta.org/en/, December 2025

The NORAD tracker for this year includes:

• NORAD Santa Tracker website.
• Live online maps on Christmas Eve, showing Santa’s current position as well as the next stops.
• Hotline for phone calls: 1-877-HINORAD (1-877-446-6723) where volunteers give real-time information and updates.
• Updates on social media via NoRAD’s channels.

NORAD has also included an AI chatbot dubbed Radar to assist with questions and provide instant status updates. It blends nostalgia with modern technology.

Google’s Santa Tracker: Playful, Interactive, And Educational

The Google Santa Tracker, first created in 2004, has slowly developed into a sandbox to test new features and experiments in design. 

The project was utilized to test new technology like “View in 3D,” that later appear in different Google applications and products, making it an experience for the holidays and an experimentation platform.

Screenshot from santatracker.google.com/, December 2025

In 2025 the site is back to its 21st anniversary with complete Santa’s Village experience that runs all through December, and then switches to the live-tracking mode at midnight on Christmas Eve. 

The highlights include:

• Mini-games include Elf Ski and Penguin Dash.
• Creative tools like Santa’s Canvas and Code Lab to create light-coding as well as digital artwork.
• Videos and activities that introduce Christmas traditions from all over the globe.
• From a teacher or parent viewpoint, it’s basically it’s a mix of timer, part code playground, and part engaging geography class.

How To Use Google’s Live Santa Map

On Christmas Eve the Google live tracker is activated and begins to follow Santa by using to the International Date Line as midnight is reached in the earliest time zones (around 10:30 a.m. UTC). The interface displays:

• Santa’s current home and his next destination.
• His distance to you and an estimate of his time for his arrival.
• An ongoing list of amount of gifts that were given out.

To gain access to it:

• Go to this Google Santa Tracker website to download the Android application.
• Navigate to this live-streamed map at midnight on December 31 to view Santa’s exact location, the delivery time and the estimated time.
• Explore more than 500 destinations around the world, complete with pictures and city details taken through Wikipedia or Google’s Local Guides.

Every town Santa “visits” features a short description as well as images making the tracker an easy way for children to discover places that they would otherwise only view in a map.

Extra Experiences, Visuals, And Holiday Activities

Beyond the tracking capabilities and tracking, the Google Santa Village includes animated scenes from bustling North Pole kitchens where elves make treats, to beautiful snowy landscapes that are filled with winter activities.

All drawn in Google’s lively colorful, lively illustration style. Games range from easy games to basic coding tasks providing youngsters (and the curious adult) an opportunity to discover as they count down Santa’s arrival.

NORAD’s experience leans more into the radar-and-control-room aesthetic, backed by its military heritage, while Google focuses on playful interactivity. Utilizing both could be fun and interesting with NORAD for the “official” radar experience and Google for games and moments of learning.

Follow Santa’s Final Stretch

Once Christmas Eve settles in, you can choose your favorite tracker, eat a festive snack, and then watch Santa’s progress while he navigates through 2.2 billion houses across the globe. 

It’s going turn out to be an exhausting evening for the red-headed Santa so the old customs still hold true. Don’t forget to take out the cookies, carrots and mince pies prior to when everyone goes to bed.

Wishing you Happy holidays from all of us at Ravi-Gupta!