Starbucks' Holiday Menu Is Here, and Fans Want to Know Where the Chestnut Praline Went

Two new drink families and four returning classics

The headline additions this year lean dessert-inspired. According to Starbucks' official holiday menu announcement, the new Tiramisu Velvet Latte, available hot or iced, combines Starbucks Signature Espresso with milk and vanilla syrup and is finished with a Velvet Mascarpone Cold Foam and a cocoa cookie dusting. A Tiramisu Velvet Cold Brew gives the same foam-and-dusting treatment to Starbucks Cold Brew, which makes the tiramisu idea a little trio rather than a single drink.

The second new family is brighter and fruitier. The Apple Pomegranate Refresher pairs apple flavors with popping pomegranate-flavored pearls, and there's a creamier Snowy Apple Drink made with coconutmilk, plus a lemonade version. Like other Refreshers, it can be ordered with no caffeine, light caffeine, or as an Energy Refresher, so the lineup has something for people who want a festive drink without the espresso.

Alongside those newcomers, the familiar holiday classics have returned, some with new twists. Here's how the launch-day drink menu breaks down:

If you'd like a broader look at the full seasonal lineup, including the bakery case, Daily Vitality's roundup of what's new, what's back and what's missing covers the wider menu in one place.

Chestnut Praline is missing at launch, and so is Eggnog

Read through Starbucks' launch materials and you won't find the Chestnut Praline Latte anywhere among the café drinks. That includes the company's Holiday 2026 hub page, which is billed as the home for seasonal news and lists the Nov. 5 launch, mystery Bearista cup boxes on Nov. 10, Red Cup Day on Nov. 17 and the original Bearista cold cup's return on Dec. 1. Chestnut Praline does show up on that page, but only in the at-home section, where Starbucks lists a Chestnut Praline Latte-inspired dairy creamer, described as blending caramelized chestnut and buttery caramel flavors, now sold at grocery stores and online nationwide. It's a small irony that fans have noticed: the flavor is on supermarket shelves this season even though the café drink isn't on the menu board.

The Eggnog Latte is the other conspicuous gap. It carries real history for the brand; Starbucks has described it as its first-ever holiday espresso beverage, dating back to 1986. Eggnog has drawn far less online noise this year than Chestnut Praline, so it works more as a quiet companion to the main story than a story of its own, but its absence matters for the same reason. Both drinks were absent at launch last year, too, which is part of why fans are reading this year's menu so closely.

Disappointment, a little drama, and plenty of comparisons to last year

The reactions started well before launch day, after Starbucks previewed the lineup in early October, but they reached a new pitch once the menu went live. Social posts are, of course, a tiny and self-selecting slice of Starbucks customers, so they say nothing reliable about how most people feel. What they do show is what this particular group of fans cares about, and the theme is remarkably consistent: people feel a beloved tradition has been swapped for something new without explanation.

One of the most pointed launch-day posts came from X user @ch3lavie, who wrote just after noon on Nov. 5: "@Starbucks explain how tiramisu is more of a holiday flavor than Chestnut praline? Who asked for that? Last year you waited until December to drop it but yall can start PSLs in AUGUST? I know youve seen the backlash. Please fix it." It's a post that neatly captures two threads at once, the tiramisu-versus-chestnut debate and the memory of last year's December return.

Not every reaction was that fiery. About half an hour later, another X user, @kevinandjos, struck a more wistful note: "For the first time in a long time I am not excited the @Starbucks holiday drinks have arrived…. They didn't bring Chestnut Praline back. So disappointed…." That quieter kind of letdown, the sense that a small seasonal ritual is missing, runs through many of the posts.

On Instagram, the conversation started earlier and centered on Starbucks' own menu-preview post. As cleveland.com reported, one commenter there put it simply: "If Chestnut Praline isn't back, neither am I." Comments in that vein are as much about loyalty and habit as they are about any one flavor.

Some fans used the moment to revisit older losses, too. Commenters on Instagram and in a Reddit thread about the full menu also mourned the Toasted White Chocolate Mocha, a holiday drink that hasn't been on the menu for several seasons, as Taste of Home noted in its coverage. For those fans, Chestnut Praline's absence seems to stir up a familiar worry that a favorite might quietly disappear for good.

For readers curious how the drinks that did make the menu compare with one another, Daily Vitality has also scored every 2026 holiday drink and bakery item out of 100.

One Instagram reply, and a carefully open-ended line

So far, Starbucks' only on-record response to the Chestnut Praline question came in the comments of that October Instagram post. When a customer wrote, "Please don't tell me chestnut praline isn't coming back," Starbucks replied, as reported by the USA TODAY Network: "Sometimes classics come and go to make room for new faves! You might just love the new Tiramisu Latte." It's a friendly, upbeat reply, and it's easy to see why it landed badly with some fans, since it reads like a gentle redirect rather than an answer.

It helps to be precise about what that reply does and doesn't say. It doesn't announce that Chestnut Praline is discontinued, and it doesn't rule out a later return; Starbucks hasn't made either statement publicly, as that same reporting noted. Everything beyond the reply itself, including the idea that the company has quietly retired the drink, is interpretation rather than confirmed fact. The Independent, which covered the launch-day backlash, said it had reached out to Starbucks for comment.

There is one other line worth knowing. Starbucks' own launch announcement says that as the season unfolds, more merry merchandise, seasonal sips and cheerful surprises will be unwrapped. That sentence names no drinks at all, so it can't be read as a hint about Chestnut Praline specifically. It simply confirms that Starbucks expects to add things to the holiday lineup as the weeks go on.

What last year's second wave tells us, and what it doesn't

This is where a little history is genuinely useful. In 2025, Starbucks' holiday menu launched on Nov. 6 without the Eggnog Latte or the Chestnut Praline Latte, and at that time the company said both would return later in the season. Then, on Dec. 1, 2025, Starbucks announced that both drinks would return to US coffeehouses starting Dec. 2, while supplies last, and it added Chestnut Praline cold foam options alongside them. That's the December drop @ch3lavie was referencing, and it's the reason many fans are holding out hope.

There's an important difference this year, though. Last fall, Starbucks told customers up front that the two drinks were coming later. This year, it hasn't said anything of the kind, and its one public reply leaned toward the new tiramisu drinks instead. So the 2025 second wave is real context, but it isn't a prediction, and it would be a stretch to treat it as evidence that the same thing will happen again.

What can be said with confidence is the shape of the season ahead. Red Cup Day arrives on Nov. 17, when anyone who buys a handcrafted holiday beverage at participating stores receives a collectible reusable red cup while supplies last, and the original Bearista cold cup returns to select coffeehouses on Dec. 1. Starbucks describes its holiday hub as a page to check throughout the season for the latest drinks and merchandise news, so any later additions would most likely be announced there first. In the meantime, the Chestnut Praline-inspired grocery creamer is the one official way the flavor is showing up this year.

If you enjoy following the business of seasonal flavors more broadly, Daily Vitality's look at how many pumpkin spice products have hit the market over time offers a fun, data-driven view of how these seasonal trends grow.

The lineup north of the border is nearly identical

Starbucks Canada's holiday menu also launched on Nov. 5 with the same new Tiramisu Velvet Latte, Tiramisu Velvet Cold Brew and Apple Pomegranate Refreshers, according to the Starbucks Canada holiday announcement. A couple of returning drinks carry slightly different names in Canada, including the Caramel Brûlé Latte and the Sugar Cookie Oat Latte, made there with Blonde Espresso and oat beverage. Red Cup Day is Nov. 17 in Canada as well, and, just like the US menu, no Chestnut Praline or Eggnog drink is listed at launch.

For now, the story on both sides of the border is the same: a festive new lineup, a beloved flavor that hasn't shown up yet, and a lot of fans watching to see whether the season has one more surprise in store.