There is a moment every Australian December when the dessert question gets settled, and for most of the country the answer has always been pavlova. Google Trends data suggests the argument is no longer quite so one-sided.
Australian searches for panettone in December have roughly doubled since 2016. Searches for pavlova in December have barely moved. Ten years ago panettone drew about one sixth of pavlova’s December search interest; last December it was close to a third.
Figure 1: December search interest in Australia for panettone and pavlova, 2016 to 2025. Source: Google Trends.
The pudding has already fallen
Pavlova is not the first casualty. Put five Christmas desserts on one scale and the clearest result is what has happened to the Christmas pudding: down roughly a quarter since 2016, while panettone has climbed past it. The crossover came in December 2024, when panettone out-searched the pudding in Australia for the first time. It widened the gap again in 2025.
Figure 2: December search interest in Australia for five Christmas desserts, 2016 against 2025, on one shared scale. Source: Google Trends.
Pandoro, panettone’s taller, plainer, un-fruited cousin from Verona, has more than doubled over the same period, though off a base so small that it still sits well behind. Fruit mince pies have gone nowhere.
There is a second pattern worth noting in the pavlova numbers. Its December figure has held, but its searches across the rest of the year have fallen by about a fifth since 2016. December accounted for roughly 37 per cent of Australia’s pavlova searches in 2016; by 2025 it was about 47 per cent. Pavlova is becoming a dessert Australians think about once a year. Panettone is becoming one they think about more often.
The window opens in late October
For anyone selling it, the shape of the season matters more than the annual total. Panettone searches sit at essentially nothing until the week of 20 October. They climb through November, and by the last week of the month they are already running at more than 40 per cent of their eventual peak. The peak itself lands in the week before Christmas, and by late January the whole thing has vanished.
Figure 3: Weekly Australian search interest in panettone, 29 September 2025 to 1 February 2026. Source: Google Trends.
In other words, the decision most Australians make about panettone is made in November, not in the week they eat it.
What Australians actually search
The most common panettone searches in Australia are practical ones. “Panettone recipe” leads, followed closely by “panettone bread pudding” and “bread and butter pudding panettone” — which is to say, a large share of the interest is in what to do with the half that is still sitting there on 27 December.
The fastest-rising searches tell a different story. The biggest riser of the past year was “Dolce & Gabbana panettone”, the designer’s decorated tins made in Sicily by the Palermo confectioner Fiasconaro. A 100-gram mini version sells in Australia through the Melbourne menswear retailer Henry Bucks for $49.95. Also rising sharply: “pandoro vs panettone”, and the names of individual producers — Galup, Vergani, Adalgisa.
That is the shape of a product moving out of the Italian grocer and into the general gift economy, where the tin matters as much as the cake.
Where in Australia
Panettone’s standing against the pavlova varies sharply by state. In Victoria, home to the country’s largest Italian community, panettone accounts for 18 per cent of the two searches combined — the highest in the country. In Tasmania it is 7 per cent.
Figure 4: Panettone’s share of combined panettone and pavlova search interest by state and territory, January to November 2026. Source: Google Trends.
South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia all sit at 14 per cent, which puts the usual Melbourne–Sydney story to one side: Adelaide and Perth are as interested as Sydney.
Not yet a contest
None of this makes panettone the Australian Christmas dessert. Pavlova still outscores it more than three to one in December, and that is before accounting for everyone who makes one without ever searching for it. But the direction has been consistent for a decade, through a pandemic and a cost-of-living squeeze, and the thing it has already overtaken is the dessert that used to be the default.
About the data
Figures are from Google Trends for Australia and were collected on 6 November 2026. Google Trends measures relative search interest on a 0–100 scale rather than absolute search volumes, so numbers can only be compared within the same chart. December comparisons use monthly data for the search terms “panettone”, “pavlova”, “christmas pudding”, “pandoro” and “fruit mince pies” from January 2016 to November 2026, compared on one shared scale. The weekly season chart uses daily data for “panettone” alone, averaged into weeks beginning Monday. Regional figures show panettone’s percentage share of combined panettone and pavlova interest in each state and territory. Retail price checked at henrybucks.com.au on 6 November 2026. Google Trends data is aggregated and anonymous.
