Golden Christmas Beetle Wins Australia’s 2026 Aussie Insect of the Year Vote

Australia 2026 Christmas beetle Aussie Insect of the Year, Digi Mart USA News (Australia): Move over, sunburnt Santa in flip-flops holding a cricket bat, because Australia has a new favorite Christmas character: a golden beetle that will have entomologists more excited than they usually are. Which says a lot.

This week, the gold Christmas beetle (Anoplognathus aureus), native to the northern region of the state of Queensland, won nearly 40% of votes in the annual Aussie Insect of the Year competition. Some 44,472 Australians voted once the field was narrowed to six finalists, with 17,454 choosing the stunning golden beetle as the winner of the contest, now in its third year.

Beetles come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and they are admittedly polarizing insects, something researchers have investigated and formed some hypotheses about. However, this gold beauty beat out two more traditional favorites: the Mallee Bronze Azure butterfly (Ogyris subterrestis) and the orchard swallowtail butterfly (Papilio aegeus).

The source does not provide a breakdown of online participants for the final six, but notes that this year’s contest attracted 86% more people than the 2025 poll, and the 2026 winner received a resounding 39.3% of votes.

Nostalgia may play a part in the winner. Australia has 35 native species of Christmas beetles, many concentrated in New South Wales.

To see this gold beauty, you would need to head much further north. Given their common name, the often brightly colored adults generally appear in December before disappearing by the new year.

Increasing urban spread in Sydney in particular has reduced their numbers, so they have become something of a Christmas treat. They are not dangerous and move slowly, and while they would prefer to be left alone, the author admits they are surprisingly enjoyable to handle.

Like another Aussie icon, the koala, the adults feed on eucalyptus leaves.