# National newspapers announce their Christmas 2025 charity partners

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2025/12/09/national-newspapers-announce-their-christmas-2025-charity-partners/
- Published: 2025-12-09T12:55:42+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**UK newspapers have launched their Christmas fundraising campaigns for selected
charities, with most of them choosing several charity beneficiaries.

## The Telegraph

![Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal 2025 logo](https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.cloud/
2025/12/image-7.png)

Image: The Telegraph

The Telegraph’s 2025 Christmas Charity Appeal is supporting four charities that 
focus respectively on neurodegenerative disease, cancer research, assistance dogs
and veterans’ wellbeing:

 * Motor Neurone Disease Association
 * Prostate Cancer Research
 * Canine Partners
 * The Not Forgotten

The appeal runs in print and online from its [launch on 1 November](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/christmas-charity-appeal/2025/11/01/telegraph-christmas-charity-appeal-2025/)
through to January 2026, and included a reader phone‑in day yesterday where journalists
and public figures staffed the lines. The phone-in has been part of the newspaper’s
Christmas charity campaign since 1996.

## Advertisement

The newspaper is promoting case‑study features across the charities and the charities
are featuring the partnership on their websites.

One of the charities has a direct relevance to one of the newspaper’s staff. [Chris Lancaster, The Telegraph’s puzzles editor](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/christmas-charity-appeal/2025/11/29/telegraph-puzzles-editor-mnd-journey/),
has been supported by the MND Association since he was diagnosed with the illness
two years ago

Online donations are handled by Charities Trust “Your donations will be processed
by Charities Trust (registered charity number 327489) “who will deduct 4% of all
funds raised (including on gift aid) to cover handling and transaction costs”.

While no overall 2025 financial target has been disclosed publicly, recent appeals,
[including that in 2024](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/christmas/2024/11/02/telegraph-christmas-charity-appeal-2024/),
have raised mid‑six‑figure sums, and the core aim is unrestricted income and profile
for the four partners.

The Telegraph Christmas Charity Campaign has [run annually for over 100 years](https://telegraph.ctdonate.org/).

## The Times & The Sunday Times

![The Times and The Sunday Times Christmas Appeal](https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.
cloud/2025/12/image-8.png)

Image: The Times and The Sunday Times

The Times and The Sunday Times Christmas Appeal 2025 is backing three charities:

 * Switchback (support for prison leavers)
 * Kissing it Better (tackling loneliness through intergenerational activity)
 * World Bicycle Relief (bikes for education and livelihoods in low‑income countries).

The partnership is positioned as a UK‑and‑global campaign around rehabilitation,
loneliness and mobility, with an implicit ambition to match or exceed the £1.5mn
raised in 2024.

The appeal launched in November and runs across the “festive period”, typically 
into early January, using long‑form features, reader donation pages and matched‑
funding offers from philanthropic backers rather than a single telethon‑style event.

Like The Telegraph, [online donations](https://times.ctdonate.org) are handled by
Charities Trust.

​

## The Guardian and The Observer

![Citizens UK selected for the Guardian 2025 Christmas Charity Appeal.](https://
wfay6x.infiniteuploads.cloud/2025/12/image-9.png)

Image: Citizens UK

The Guardian and Observer’s 2025 Christmas charity appeal is themed around “Hope”
and supports a number of grassroots organisations including Citizens UK, with a 
focus on community organising, local cohesion and building a “power‑building fund”
for neighbourhood‑level change.

[Announcing the Christmas appeal](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/05/guardian-charity-appeal-2025-communities-hope)
The Guardian’s editor Katharine Viner said:

> “This year’s theme, unapologetically, is hope. We are supporting grassroots charities,
> which, through their vital work at the heart of local neighbourhoods, nurture 
> community pride and positive change, and provide a powerful antidote to polarisation,
> distrust and hate”.

Citizens UK’s announcement says the appeal runs from Friday 5 December to Sunday
11 January, with Guardian journalism highlighting local stories of organising around
issues such as safety, welcome for migrants and the living wage.

No public income target has yet been published for 2025, but recent appeals have
raised more than £1.7mn.

Citizens UK says that support from The Guardian’s appeal will enable it to launch
a Power-Building Fund “to grow the skills, confidence, and collective power of communities
across the UK”.

[Online donations](http://guardian.ctdonate.org) are handled by Charities Trust.

![Logos of the five charities that The Guardian's 2025 Christmas Appeal is supporting.](
https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.cloud/2025/12/CleanShot-2025-12-09-at-12.42.02@2x.
png)

Image: The Guardian

The other charities that will benefit from the appeal are:

 * The Linking Network
 * Locality
 * Hope Unlimited Charitable Trust
 * Who is Your Neighbour?

 * [Guardian charity appeal donations top £200,000 before annual telethon](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/12/guardian-charity-appeal-donations-top-200000-before-annual-telethon)**(
   12 December 2025, The Guardian)**

## Daily Mirror (Reach plc)

The [Daily Mirror’s 2025 Christmas appeal](https://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/mirror-christmas-appeal)
is supporting children’s technology charity Lifelites, raising funds to provide 
specialist digital and sensory equipment for children with life‑limiting conditions
in hospices across the UK.

![Light up a Child's Christmas Mirror Lifelites - campaign logo](https://wfay6x.
infiniteuploads.cloud/2025/12/CleanShot-2025-12-09-at-12.38.26@2x.png)

Image: The Mirror

The Mirror presents the campaign, which [launched on 30 November](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mirror-christmas-campaign-lifelites-felix-36331028),
around “unwrapping the magic of Christmas”, with a series of human‑interest features
on families using Lifelites kit and a standing donation ask rather than a single
headline financial target.

Coverage will appeal through December in print and online. The campaign is designed
to extend access to Lifelites technology beyond the roughly 15,000 children currently
reached.

Donations are handled via [Lifelites’ website](https://www.lifelites.org/christmas/?utm_source=mirror&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=christmas_appeal).​

## Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is this year supporting Alzheimer’s Society in a joint campaign ‘
Defeating Dementia’.

The campaign highlights the fact that dementia “is the UK’s biggest killer, yet 
it still sits far behind other conditions such as cancer, HIV and heart disease 
in terms of awareness, funding and public understanding”.

The first three days of the campaign, which launched on 6 December, have seen:
•
Two front pages dedicated to dementia• A 6,000% increase in people completing our
online symptoms checklist• A surge in people calling the charity’s Helpline “for
the very first time” after seeing its support line number across the coverage

![Two full pages in the Daily Mail covering Alzheimer's Society's work to tackle
alzheimer's.](https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.cloud/2025/12/image-10.png)

Photo: [Charlotte Matier on Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7403764425595445249)

Charlotte Matier, Associate Director of High Value and Strategic Partnerships at
the charity, [said on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7403764425595445249):

> “This is what amplification looks like when it works; when the right partners 
> come together with a shared purpose…
> “This partnership is just the beginning – a powerful demonstration of what’s possible
> when ambition, scale and purpose align. We’re excited for what comes next, and
> for the growing movement of partners who want to stand with us to defeat dementia
> together”.

 * **[Newspaper and radio Christmas appeals in 2019](https://fundraising.co.uk/2019/12/11/newspaper-radio-christmas-appeals-2019/)(
   11 December 2019)
 * **[Newspaper Christmas appeals 2024: who is supporting whom in 2024](https://fundraising.co.uk/2024/12/10/newspaper-christmas-appeals-whos-supporting-who-in-2024/)(
   10 December 2024)
 * **[Newspaper Christmas appeals 1999](https://fundraising.co.uk/1999/11/29/newspapers039-christmas-appeals/)(
   29 November 1999)**

## Comments

### By: HowardLake

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2025/12/09/national-newspapers-announce-their-christmas-2025-charity-partners/#comment-4725
- Published: 2026-04-17T14:50:00+01:00

Civil Society subsequently reported a drop in total donations to these Christmas
appeals from newspapers

 [https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/dip-in-total-donations-to-major-newspapers-christmas-appeals.html](https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/dip-in-total-donations-to-major-newspapers-christmas-appeals.html)
