Whitby Lion's Boxing Day Dip - Whitby Bandstand

Whitby Lion's Boxing Day Dip is back for 2025! Are you crazy or brave enough to run into the North Sea on Boxing Day for charity? This year will also be the club’s 50th Boxing Day Dip, the club plans to celebrate this milestone and the £100,000’s our dippers have raised for local and national charities over the last fifty years.

It has become somewhat of a tradition in our beautiful little seaside town to enjoy a rather refreshing dip in the North Sea on Boxing Day morning. It's certainly a unique and memorable experience that will raise lots of money for local charities. Fancy dress is a must, for many dippers, with prizes available for the best! In previous years, we have had some fantastic costumes such as dinosaurs, Batman and Robin, Christmas trees and even a team of traffic cones and a fancy dress wedding proposal! This year we are excited to announce that Derek Matthewson from the TV program Bangers and Cash will be judging and handing out prizes for our fancy dress competition. As a thank you to Derek for supporting the Boxing Day Dip, we will be making a £500 donation to a charity which he supports. So, bring your dressing up A-game.

Entry costs £10 per person plus a booking fee; this will be paid direct to Whitby Lion’s. To pay your entry fee and request a sponsor form for the dip, please go to www.whitbylionsclub.org.uk and go to the Boxing Day Dip page to sign up and pay online. Alternatively, you can enter and pay at The Whitby Pet Shop, 15 Station Square, Whitby and collect a sponsor form. You can also enter and pay on the day by credit/debit card at the registration tent which is located near the bandstand on Pier Road.

Participants who wish to raise sponsorship for their chosen charity, with 100% of the money they raise going to the charity/organisation of their choice. Participants will be fully responsible for collecting and then distributing their sponsor money to their chosen charity. Whitby Lion’s will not be involved in the process. This method of running the event has hugely increased the numbers of people wanting to take part.

This fun and frantic event has now been running over the last 49 years, originally seeing numbers soar from a handful of brave local citizens to over 300 eager individuals travelling from far and wide, desperate to run into the wintery ice-cold waves of the North Sea. Although as you’d expect, you are more likely to see the big numbers witnessing the excitement from the side-lines. The Boxing Day has become a traditional family friendly event with many families meeting up after Christmas Day to spending a lovely Boxing Day morning together.

Last year’s 2024 dip was our second biggest ever with an amazing 309 dippers taking part, with the event raising an incredible £4,389.00 for the club! Which will support their work helping local organisations and charities. There was also amazing support from the local community, with at least a thousand spectators supporting the event and joining in with the fun. The dippers themselves would have raised many thousands of pounds for various local and national charities. During our 2019 dip, we also featured on national television with BBC Breakfast filming live at the event on Boxing Day morning. We hope for another equally successful event this year, thank you to our local community who generously support ourselves, our dippers and the many charities involved. Keep an eye out for our festive street collectors who will be giving away a chocolate sweet for every donation!

To keep up to date for the latest event information please visit the Whitby Lions Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages. The club would again like to thank everyone who enters, our volunteers and especially The Whitby Pet Shop for taking the time to register our dippers, Whitby Diving Club who help to ensure the safety of our dippers along with Whitby’s Coastguard Team and Whitby’s R.N.L.I. inshore lifeboat.