Somewhere around late October, you’ll notice speculaas biscuits stacking up in the supermarket and a steamboat popping up in every shop window. That’s your cue: Sinterklaas season is starting, and if nobody’s explained it to you yet, it can feel like the whole country is in on a joke you missed. Sinterklaas for expat families is really its own small learning curve, separate from Christmas, with its own dates, its own songs, and its own etiquette around shoes and biscuits.
This is the guide we wish someone had handed us the first year. What Sinterklaas actually is, the dates that matter for 2026, what your kid’s school will expect from you, and the honest, current story on Zwarte Piet, which has changed more in the last two years than in the previous twenty.
What Sinterklaas Actually Is
Sinterklaas is based on Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop, and the character predates the American Santa Claus by centuries (Dutch settlers actually took the tradition to New York, where it eventually morphed into Santa). In the Dutch telling, Sinterklaas lives in Spain and sails to the Netherlands every year in mid-November on a steamboat loaded with presents, arriving to a full television broadcast and thousands of children waving flags on the quayside.
He’s helped by Pieten (Petes), and he rides a white horse named Amerigo. The big gift-giving night is Pakjesavond, on the evening of December 5, and it happens separately from Christmas. Most Dutch families do a low-key Christmas of food and family time, while Sinterklaas is the one with the presents, the excitement, and the weeks of buildup. If you’re expecting your kids to get toys on December 25 the way they might elsewhere, it’s worth resetting that expectation early, the big haul happens on the 5th.
Sinterklaas for Expat Families: Key Dates for 2026
Sinterklaas officially arrives in the Netherlands on Saturday, November 14, 2026, this year’s national arrival (intocht) is in Grave, in the Land van Cuijk, broadcast live on NPO Zapp from noon. Amsterdam holds its own local arrival the next day, on Sunday, November 15, 2026, from around 10:00 to 15:30, with Sinterklaas coming in by boat and then continuing through the city centre on horseback. Every city and town does its own version of this on a weekend in mid-November, so check your own gemeente’s site for the local one nearest you.
From the Monday after the national arrival, Het Sinterklaasjournaal, a daily faux-news show following Sinterklaas and the Pieten, airs on NPO Zapp at 18:00 right through to December 5. Dutch kids watch it religiously, and it’s genuinely one of the easiest ways for a non-Dutch-speaking child to pick up the story and some vocabulary, even if they’re only catching the pictures at first. Then comes Pakjesavond on Saturday, December 5, 2026, the evening when presents actually appear.
Setting Out a Shoe (Schoenzetten)
Between the arrival and December 5, kids set out a shoe, usually by the front door, the fireplace, or a radiator, with a drawing for Sinterklaas or a carrot for Amerigo tucked inside. They sing a Sinterklaas song, and the next morning there’s usually a small treat: a pepernoot, a marzipan shape, sometimes a tiny toy. It doesn’t happen every night. Most families do it a handful of times across the season, and schools and daycares usually pick one or two set days for it, so ask your child’s teacher when their shoe day is rather than guessing.
Don’t overthink the production value here. This isn’t the elaborate stocking-stuffing some expat parents brace for, a couple of pepernoten and a small item is completely normal, and Dutch parents are famously unbothered about making it a big show every single time.
Chocolate Letters, Pepernoten and the Songs
Two edible traditions you’ll want to know before your kid asks. The chocoladeletter is a large chocolate letter, usually the first letter of the child’s first name, given as part of their Sinterklaas gifts. Bakeries and supermarkets sell every letter of the alphabet from late October, and the more popular initials sell out first, so if you want a specific letter for a specific kid, don’t leave it until December.
Pepernoten (small, hard, spiced biscuits) and their softer cousin kruidnoten show up everywhere from October onwards, in shops, at school, thrown by “Pieten” at events. There’s also a whole songbook of Sinterklaas songs that every Dutch child learns by heart, “Sinterklaas Kapoentje” being the classic one sung at the door before checking a shoe. You’ll pick the tunes up fast just from repetition at school pickup.
About Zwarte Piet: What’s Actually Changed
This is the part expat parents ask about most, and it’s genuinely different now than it was even a few years ago. For decades, Sinterklaas’s helpers were “Zwarte Piet,” performed with full blackface, red lips, and afro wigs, and that version drew a long, public debate about racist imagery tied to the country’s slavery history. That debate has largely resolved. The activist group Kick Out Zwarte Piet, which pushed for change since 2010, formally dissolved in December 2025, saying its core goals had been met. The national and Amsterdam arrivals now use only Roetveegpiet (“soot-smudge Pete”), a simple sooty smudge across the cheeks meant to look like chimney soot, no blackface, no wigs, no exaggerated makeup.
In practice, most schools in Amsterdam and the other big cities switched to Roetveegpiet years ago, and by the 2025 season it had become the default at the big national events too. You may still see traditional Zwarte Piet at smaller, more traditional celebrations in some towns, particularly outside the Randstad, but it’s no longer what you’ll see on national television or in Amsterdam’s own parade. If your child asks why some Pieten look different in older books or decorations, “that’s how it used to be drawn, but it changed” is an honest, simple answer.
How Schools Handle It
Expect Sinterklaas to more or less take over your child’s school for the first week of December. Younger kids (roughly through group 5, so around age 8) usually do a class party with games, songs, and a visit from Sinterklaas and Pieten, plus their shoe-setting day. Older kids switch to surprises: each child draws a classmate’s name (lootjes trekken), then makes a themed gift wrapped inside a handmade craft project, along with a poem written about that classmate, often gently teasing. It’s a proper craft project, so if your child comes home saying they need a shoebox and a name in a few weeks, that’s what’s coming.
School treat customs around Sinterklaas are close cousins of the birthday traktatie culture, so if that concept is new to you, our guide to Dutch kids’ birthday parties explained for expat parents covers the same “small, homemade, shared with the whole class” logic that applies here too.
How to Explain It to Your Kids
Explaining Sinterklaas for expat families usually comes down to one thing: treating it the way you’d treat any local festival: explain it as something Dutch kids do, not something your family necessarily has to adopt wholesale. A few things that helped us:
- Watch a few minutes of Het Sinterklaasjournaal together, even without full Dutch, the story comes through visually.
- Ask your child’s teacher what the class is actually doing and when, shoe days and surprise deadlines sneak up fast.
- Decide as a family how much you’re opting into. Plenty of expat families do the school parts fully and keep gift-giving small and separate at home, others go all in. There’s no wrong version.
- If your child gets confused about Sinterklaas versus Santa, it helps to say plainly that they’re different characters from different countries who both give presents, rather than trying to merge the two stories.
Where to See the Arrival in Amsterdam
Amsterdam’s intocht is free to watch and draws big, good-natured crowds along the canal route and then on horseback from Waterlooplein, past Rembrandtplein and the Utrechtsestraat, toward Leidseplein. Arrive with time to spare for a decent spot along the water, and dress for standing around outdoors in mid-November, it’s usually damp and cold rather than freezing. If watching a packed crowd with a toddler sounds like more stress than fun, most neighbourhood shopping streets also run their own smaller, local Sinterklaas events in the weeks after, worth checking your local events listings for something closer to home and less crowded.
Quick Practical Notes
A few things nobody tells you upfront. Shops and Sinterklaas-related stock (chocolate letters, wrapping paper, “surprise” craft supplies) show up from mid-October, so there’s no rush to buy early except for popular chocolate letter initials. Daycares and schools close as normal on December 5 itself in most cases, it isn’t a public holiday, but plenty of workplaces are noticeably quieter that afternoon as parents leave early for Pakjesavond. And once December 5 has passed, the country pivots hard into actual Christmas mode, decorations and markets appear almost overnight, which is worth knowing if you’re wondering why nothing feels festive until suddenly it all does at once. For what’s actually open and running in the weeks after Pakjesavond, our roundup of what’s on with kids in December in the Netherlands picks up right where this one leaves off.
Sinterklaas for expat families usually takes one full season to click, and by the second year it usually feels completely normal, the shoe by the radiator, the chocolate letters, the odd little poems. It’s one of the traditions that makes it easy to see why so many families rate the Netherlands among the most kid-friendly countries in Europe, a whole national event built entirely around delighting children. Once you’ve been through it once, you’ll be the one explaining the rules to the next new family on your street.
