Once the dates are circled on the calendar and the dance venue reserved, your students will immediately want to choose their Homecoming or spirit week theme. The 30 spirit week ideas below guarantee that your students will find the perfect theme for this year.

But first, what makes a good Homecoming or spirit week theme?

There are a couple of aspects to consider when deciding your high school’s Homecoming theme. Most importantly, it needs to have four solid subthemes that fit under the main theme. Think about all the elements of your high school’s Homecoming and how students will need to use the overall theme and each grade’s subtheme.

Also, the theme needs to avoid providing opportunities for students to stereotype or disrespect groups, places, or cultures. It’s important that respect and inclusion are upheld. Check out my other blog post with more great tips for making your Homecoming inclusive if you want to learn more.

Use these questions to guide your decision process:

• Can each grade easily have a dress-up day, select music for a skit or dance, decorate their float and/or hallway, and perform any other activity using their subtheme?

• Do the theme and each subtheme meet school appropriateness and remain respectful of people of different cultures and nationalities? How will this be ensured?

• Does the overall theme lend itself well to other spirit week ideas like lunchtime games, decorations, the name of the dance, and any other school events?

Have your student leaders keep these questions in mind as they look over the list below or any other themes they’re considering. Then using a good consensus strategy, come to a decision that each grade is happy with. 

Check out my flip deck of use-immediately idea cards of various brainstorming and consensus strategies to help your student leaders decide on a theme your school will be excited about. 

Now, let’s dive into these 30 no-fail Homecoming or spirit week theme ideas with accompanying subthemes and dance ideas.

All Dressed Up

Have a little fun and assign each grade a different salad dressings to inspire four different subthemes: Ranch, Italian, French, (Thousand) Island. 

Then have the dance take on a farm or garden theme.

America the Beautiful 

Pick different regions around the country. Places like the West, Alaska or Pacific Northwest, Southern California, New England, Hawaii, or Florida. 

Or pick four different cities. Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, and Nashville, for example. 

Create a road trip feel for the dance with paper map decorations and ribbons of gray highway on the walls. 

Animal Kingdom

Pick different animal habitats, like jungle, savannah, ocean, and the artic. 

Turn the four corners of the dance venue into the different regions as if it were a zoo.

Blast from the Past

Have each grade take on a decade, and yes, the 90s are now eligible. 

Either pick one decade to decorate the dance venue with, or do a montage of all four. And be sure to play songs from each era.

Breakfast of Champions

Select four favorite childhood cereals to base each grade’s theme on: Lucky Charms, Fruity Pebbles, Cap’n Crunch, and Count Chocula all have iconic subtheme-worthy mascots and vibes. 

Create nostalgia by creating dance tickets to look like cereal boxes and decorating the dance space in bright, oversized cereal pieces.

Game Night

Have each grade take on a classic board game: Candyland, Clue, Monopoly, Operation.

You could also do popular TV game shows like Jeopardy, The Price is Right, American Gladiators, and Double Dare.

Throughout the dance, put on funny skits showcasing each of the four games.

Halloween Fright 

If Homecoming Week falls close to Halloween, have each grade take on a different aspect of the holiday: witches, scarecrows, vampires, zombies, ghosts.

You could also do a Halloween or scary movie for each grade, being careful things remain school appropriate. 

Decorate the dance as a haunted mansion or graveyard.

Heroes & Villains

Pick a popular superhero franchise for each grade. There are so many options beyond the solo Superman and Batman. Consider groups like the Avengers, X-Men, Power Rangers, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for each grade for a bit more gender and ethnic representation.

Turn your dance venue into the pages of a comic book with bright action bubbles and city skylines. 

Hometown Favorite

If you’re in a large city with multiple professional sports teams, assign one to each grade. 

Turn the dance into a sporting event with a funny halftime show and tailgate food-type snacks.

Isles and Isles

Pick four very different islands around the world like Madagascar, Australia, Ireland, Hawaii.  If students choose this theme, take extreme care that throughout the week students avoid anything that would inadvertently embody negative or disrespectful stereotypes about the people and cultures of these places. 

Make sure your student leaders are following a high level of scrutiny to ensure negative or disrespectful stereotypes about the people and cultures of these places are avoided.

The dance could take on a tropical island or a cruise ship theme. 

Jukebox Jams

Have each grade take on a genre of music: country, pop, grunge, hip-hop.

This could be modern tunes or take on a more oldies vibe with classic bands or decades: like the Beatles, 90s pop, Motown, or Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.

Dance tickets could be created to look like album covers or concert tickets, and the whole event could be set up like a concert. 

Lost Cities Found

Atlantis, Camelot, El Dorado, and Mount Olympus each have rich enough lore to create subthemes around them. Be sure to have your student leaders spend time researching them and sharing what they learned to their classmates. 

The dance could have a time travel vibe to it. 

Movie (or Theater!) Night

Go for a vintage Hollywood vibe picking iconic films for each grade level. Titles like The Wizard of Oz, Roman Holiday, Birds, or James Bond.

Or, do a modern red carpet premiere Hollywood theme and select recent blockbuster or Oscar-winning films as the subthemes.

You could even do a Broadway theme and pick four classic or modern musicals: Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Hamilton, and Chicago all make fun choices. 

For all the movie themed options here and below, creating a red-carpet experience for the dance is a no-brainer. Try recreating a local historic theater or the TCL Chinese Theatre (more commonly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre) with its famous handprints. 

A Night on the Strip

Travel to Las Vegas for the week and use four of its most iconic hotels as your subthemes: The Venetian, Circus Circus, New York New York, The Excalibur, or Caesars, to name a few options.

Decorate the dance with oversized playing cards and dice.

Once Upon a Time

You could go a classic route and select fairytale films from before the students’ time like Cinderella, Lion King, The Little Mermaid, or Beauty and the Beast.

Or select more modern movies like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., or Shrek.

TV Land

Take on a vintage TV theme with classic shows like the Brady Bunch, Miami Vice, Gilligan’s Island, and Saved by the Bell. 

Or pick four favorite cartoons and shows from the students’ own childhood.

If students want to do four modern shows, be sure they have a wide enough appeal.

Create remote control-looking dance tickets and have the photo booth corner look like the set of one of the shows.

Whirlwind World Tour

Pick four distinct metropolitan areas from around the globe. Again, make sure your student leaders are following a high level of scrutiny as described above to avoided negative or disrespectful stereotypes.

You could also pick geographic regions. For example, places like Amazon rainforest, African savannah, Caribbean islands, or the Swiss Alps.

Another option is ancient civilizations like Egypt, Rome, Greece, and Medieval Europe. 

With all these, make it clear to your student leaders and class officers that decorations, costumes, games, and anything else inspired by the theme must be researched, respectful, and pass a higher level of scrutiny.

Dance tickets can become plane tickets and the venue can have a travel passport theme. 

Winter Wonderland

If it’s a winter Homecoming week, then you could pick various holiday favorite films, like Elf, Frozen, The Polar Express, and A Charlie Brown Christmas for each grade to showcase.

Hopefully, this list gives you and your students more than enough ideas to pick a favorite for their high school Homecoming or spirit week theme. Be sure to grab my Project Planning Kit, which is a lifesaver in allowing your student leaders to take the lead in brainstorming, planning, and carrying out each aspect of Homecoming—from the dress-up days to the spirit assembly to the dance. The best part is that these universal templates and forms become a how-to guide for next year’s group!

Image credit: Todd Cravens