Time for our 2025 recap! This post will include some highlights for each month but the bulk of the history can be found in the monthly “Best of” posts, which include the top movies, games, music and art along with a monthly summary of collabs, meetups and events.
January
January 23rd was our 10th annual Pixel Day, have a look at the Pixel Day winners!
Over 1,700 people came together to back the Newgrounds Documentary Kickstarter.
February
To kick off Flash Forward 2025, PsychoGoldfish announced a Newgrounds.io library for ActionScript 2.0. This replaced our legacy Flash API, keeping everything under the modern system moving forward.
@KEKIIRO, @Slimygoo and @Anislug hosted NG Winterfest 2025
@Starcat celebrated the Valentine’s season with a Starcat Finds Love Art Contest.
March
@KingCrowned hosted the Too Much Jam!
April
April 6th was the 25th Anniversary of the Flash Portal becoming automated!
We introduced some new keyboard shortcuts for audio and art browsing.
@DannyGoodShirt hosted the Jump Comic Contest!
Flash Forward ran from February through April, check out the Flash Forward winners!
We didn’t have a formal Pico Day this year but there was still a Pico Day post.
May
We introduced controller mapping for Flash games!
@AED4 wrapped up the NG Musicians' Championship!
June
@The-Great-One hosted the annual Treasure Hunt.
June 6th was our first ever Low Poly Day, check out the Low Poly Day winners!
July
@Random-storykeeper hosted the Art Inspired Music contest.
@Figburn hosted the Contract Rush Art Contest.
July 6th was NG's 30th anniversary as a website!
August
@jamriot hosted Writer’s Jam 2025.
August 15th was Clock Day.
August 26th was Robot Day.
@Aalasteir hosted the Tutorial Jam.
September
In September NG was hit by a massive DDoS attack, resulting in the introduction of NG Guard.
We introduced age verification for UK users, per requirements of the UK Online Safety Act.
September 22nd was Madness Day.
October
October was our annual Halloween Spooktaclar!
@Mockery hosted a Trick or Treat Adventure Art Contest, check out the TTA contest winners.
November
In November our front page promo box got some improvements. The admin tool for that box was one of
the last remaining pages using our old layout, one of many code clean-up projects this year.
@Aalasteir hosted the Parody Jam.
@Benji-G hosted the NG Audio Deathmatch.
December
We kicked off December with our annual Drawing Tablet Giveaway and Student Film Showcase.
Art Secret Santa resulted in 486 pieces of art!
People made lots of stuff to celebrate the holidays.
Summary
This was our second year of major internal changes, without a lot to show for it on the front end, although we did get UK age verification out the door. I’m hoping for more noteworthy progress in 2026, although we still have some humps to get over first.
Thank you everyone who has kept Newgrounds fresh and exciting every day with your contributions! You’re the reason we keep this going year after year, despite the many hardships of maintaining a project like this.
You can follow the entire history of NG on the NG History page!
Ruffle / Flash Preservation Status
NG remained a Ruffle sponsor throughout 2025. Ruffle is the open source Flash emulator we use to keep Flash content running in the browser.
Ruffle continued to improve throughout the year, both in terms of performance and supporting more games. Big thanks to @olskoo for testing (and sometimes even fixing) a lot of games, resulting in a lot more games switching to Ruffle this year!
We’ll be hosting another Flash Forward event in 2026 and the deadline is already on the calendar as April 20th. If you have a copy of Flash, consider making a new Flash game or interactive movie to participate! We’ll kick off prize fundraising in the new year.
Monthly Prizes
We managed to maintain our prize pool this year and even expanded it, thanks to generous recurring sponsors like @RobTop (Geometry Dash), @MassiveMonster (Cult of the Lamb), @PuffballsUnited (Among Us), @TeamTrivial, @53xy83457 and @River.
Newgrounds distributed over $40,000 to the community in 2025, largely from events and monthly prizes.
End of 2025 Supporter Status
We’re ending the year with ~9,500 active Supporters, having received a bump from UK age verification. NG continues to run at a growing loss that we can hopefully shrink in 2026.
The last remaining ads on Newgrounds appear on A-rated movies and games, however their performance will continue to decline as stricter age verification expands to more territories. We intend to phase out these ads, one of many things that would have already happened if more people had become Supporters over the past decade!
More below!
