Rules

The game

Whoseween ranks Halloween costumes and house decorations by votes. It is free to play, to browse and to enter.

• You are shown two, and you pick the one you like more. The site chooses the pair, never you.
• You never see your own entry, or the same pair twice.
• “Can’t decide” skips a pair and counts for nothing.
• You need no account to vote or to guess.
• Costumes and house decorations are two games, each with boards of its own.

The season

• The ball opens on Tuesday October 20, 2026. Costumes from earlier years are welcome.
• Uploads close at the end of Monday November 2, Toronto time.
• Voting and guessing close on Wednesday November 4 at 8 pm, Toronto time, and the final ranking is revealed.

After the final the boards stand as the 2026 Hall of Fame until the next season opens.

How ranking works

• Each entry has one score, worked out from who it beat and who beat it. Beating a strong entry counts for more.
• What counts is how often it wins and against whom, not how many votes it has.
• A new entry has no rank until it has been voted on 20 times. Until then it is in the game and on no board.
• Every entry is given at least 40 votes before the final, as long as people keep voting.
• A city, a state or province and a country each have a board of their own from 10 entries.
• The ranking is worked out again every few minutes.

What you can see

• The world’s top twenty are free for everyone.
• Every place after the twentieth, and the board of any single city, state, province or country, come with the Season Pass.
• Your own entry is always clear to you, and its page shows its ranks to everyone.

The guessing game

• You are shown one costume and you type what it is. Close answers and nicknames count.
• A close call is read by an AI judge. It sees the words of your guess and nothing about you.
• Reveal with nothing typed shows the answer and counts as a miss.
• A costume is on the Most guessable board once it has 20 guesses.

Fair play

• Votes and guesses from the connection an entry was uploaded from never count for it.
• Votes from someone who arrived through an entry’s own link never count for or against it.
• A visitor can cast at most 300 votes and 300 guesses a day, and meets the same entry only a few times.
• There is a check that you are a person.
• Votes that come from cheating are left out, and the ranking corrects itself. We may close the account of anyone who tries.

What a photo may show

• Your own costume. You are in the photo, or you have the say-so of everyone who is.
• A child’s photo only from their parent or guardian.
• No nudity or sexual content.
• Nothing hateful: no blackface, no hate symbols, no mocking a real tragedy.
• No real violence, and no real weapons pointed at anyone.
• No adverts, no photo taken from the internet, and no photo of a celebrity.
• Fake blood and scary make-up are what Halloween is. They are allowed.

A photo that sexualises anyone who may be under 18 is refused, and reported if it is illegal.

Every upload is checked before it is shown: first by an AI, and by a person if the AI is unsure. Your photo is shown as you sent it.

Who may upload

• Adults upload as normal.
• You must be 13 or over to enter.
• A free account enters one costume and one house decoration a season. The Season Pass allows three of each.
• You may replace the photo of an entry once, and its ranking then starts again.

Your first and last name is shown on your costume’s page, and never on a board or in the games. If you are under 18, only your first name is.

The people who run the site may enter any number of costumes, from any place. Theirs are checked and ranked like everyone else’s.

House decorations

• The outside of your own home, decorated for Halloween: the house, the yard, the porch or the front door. Nothing indoors, and nobody else’s home.
• Check that the photo shows no house number, street sign or licence plate. We do not check a photo for an address.
• A house’s page shows its photo, its title, its city and its ranks, and no person’s name.
• If a photo shows your home and you did not agree to it, use the report button on its page.

Reports and removal

• Every entry’s page has a report button. An entry reported by three different visitors is hidden until a person has looked.
• You can remove your own entry at any time, from your account page.
• If you are in someone else’s photo, or you are the parent of a child in one, use the report button or write to hello@whoseween.com.

Paying never changes a rank

A pass is never an entry fee. Uploading is free, and there are no prizes. Paying never changes a rank, or how often an entry is shown to voters. A sponsor never touches a rank either.

For fun

• Whoseween is a game. A rank comes from other people’s votes. It is not a prize, and it is worth no money.
• Whoseween is not connected to any film, show, game, brand or person a costume shows. Characters and their names belong to their owners.
• The Terms page has the full terms.