Staff Halloween Costume Contest

Halloween Costume Contest

October 1 to 30, 2026

UCR Staff Assembly invites all UCR staff to participate in our annual Halloween costume contest! The contest is open from October 1 to 30, 2026. Please review the complete rules and categories below.

Contest Rules

Costumes must be worn by staff and be appropriate for work. We ask that all costume choices reflect cultural sensitivity by recognizing that costuming based on simplistic ethnic, racial, gender, religious, disability, and other hurtful stereotypes disrespects cultural identities by reducing them to caricature.

Maximum of 20 participants per photo.
One photo submission per household/office/department/unit/immediate work group. Pick your best photo!
No Photoshop, photo-illustration, extensive retouching, or graphic filters.
- Acceptable adjustments: Brightness, contrast, curves, exposure, desaturate, Instagram filters, and VSCO filters.
- Unacceptable extensive retouching examples: Recoloring skin, photoshopping additional elements into photos, distorting, skewing, rotating, scaling, warping, changing perspective, or applying filters with graphic or animated elements (e.g., filters from Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, etc.).
Play fair, make it tasteful, and be creative.
Costumes do not have to be worn all day.
This contest is open to UCR staff members only.

Submitting Your Entry

Submissions are due by 5 p.m. on Friday, October 30. Please email your entries to staffassembly@ucr.edu (Important: Contest entries must be received by Staff Assembly via email to be eligible).
Please include a caption, your photo theme or category, any personal Facebook or Instagram pages you would like us to tag, and the name of the department or individuals who are participating in the photo — we need to know who will receive the prize if your entry wins!

For fun, you can also post your Halloween photos (including pictures of your home Halloween decorations, your family's costumes, or your pet's costume) on social media and tag Staff Assembly (@ucrstaffassembly on Instagram)! These will not count as contest entries, but are a fun way for us to build community.

Prizes

The Staff Assembly will award a grand prize, a runner-up prize, and several small prizes. Prize items include a pizza party, coffee and donuts, gift cards, and UCR swag.

Winners for each category will be chosen the week after the contest ends and will be announced on Staff Assembly's social media channels. Winners will also be notified through email.

Important: Winners must claim their prize within a month of being notified by responding to Staff Assembly's email. Winners have until the end of the current academic year (until May 2027) to redeem their prize.

Need more information?

Contact Selina Hernandez and Hapy Ting
Co-Directors of Marketing and Communications

Email: selina.hernandez@ucr.edu
Phone: (951) 827-0135