93 Years After Their Founders First Started Selling Cakes Out Of The Back Of Their Car In Tennessee, Little Debbie Announces Its Holiday Line-Up For 2026

Little Debbie has set its Christmas lineup for 2026. Two snacks are new, Hot Cocoa Mini Muffins and Big Pack Christmas Old Fashioned Donuts, and seven seasonal regulars are back, led by Christmas Tree Cakes. Trade outlet Snack and Bakery reported the announcement on September 22, and the boxes start reaching stores in mid-October.

From the back of a 1928 Whippet

McKee Foods, the Tennessee family bakery behind Little Debbie, traces its start to the Great Depression. Its history page says O.D. McKee spent 1933 selling 5-cent cakes from the back seat of his 1928 Whippet. Little Debbie’s own timeline adds that he took the seat out during the week so the family car could work as a sales vehicle, and that the cakes came from another bakery. Later accounts place those sales in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the McKees had moved that year.

In 1934, O.D. and his wife, Ruth, bought a small Chattanooga bakery called Jack’s Cookie Company and started baking cakes of their own. Count from that year in the car and 2026 makes 93.

The Little Debbie name is younger. The brand dates to August 23, 1960, when O.D. named a new family-pack carton after his granddaughter Debbie, who was 4. The first snack sold under her name was the Oatmeal Creme Pie, which the company dates to 1935 and which inspired our own Oatmeal Cream Pie Cookies. Christmas Tree Cakes arrived in 1985.

What’s new for 2026

Hot Cocoa Mini Muffins. Bite-size chocolate muffins with marshmallow-flavored bits, wrapped in individual pouches. Sporked reports 20 muffins to a box, four per pouch. For a from-scratch take on the flavor, our Double Chocolate Hot Cocoa Cookies put cocoa and two kinds of chocolate chips in the dough and finish with mini marshmallows on top.

Big Pack Christmas Old Fashioned Donuts. Glazed cake-style donuts finished with red and green sprinkles. Simply Recipes reports six to a Big Pack.

What’s coming back

• Christmas Tree Cakes, in vanilla and chocolate
• Christmas Tree Brownies
• North Pole Nutty Buddy Wafer Bars, the peanut butter wafer bars dipped in white fudge
• Gingerbread Cookies, soft and spiced, in holiday shapes
• Cherry Cordials, soft cookies with cherry-flavored creme under a chocolatey coating
• Christmas Mini Muffins, vanilla with red and green sprinkles
• Mini Christmas Tree Cake Donuts, with white frosting, red stripes and green sugar

Two of those flavors have a homemade cousin on this site: Copycat Starbucks Ginger Molasses Cookies, spiced with ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg and rolled in sugar, and Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies, which pair maraschino cherries with milk chocolate chips the way the Cherry Cordials pair cherry and chocolate.

The single-serve rack grows too. Christmas Tree Cakes are joined there this year by the new Christmas Old Fashioned Donuts and by Cosmic Brownies.

When and where to find them

The lineup rolls out from mid-October through mid-December 2026 at major grocery retailers, mass merchandise stores and convenience stores nationwide.

Little Debbie’s own Instagram account started teasing the season on October 1 with a post captioned, “We’re not saying anything just yet.”

View this post from Little Debbie (@thereallittledebbie) on Instagram