In Ugly Christmas Sweaters, players compete against each other through trick-taking and drafting to collect and assemble sweater pieces.

Various gameplay cards (which are drawn at the start of each round) determine gameplay and bonus scoring. The end of a round is triggered when a player completes three sweater builds. At the end of each round, victory points are awarded based on sweaters built and bonus scoring (points for sweaters following round-specific goals and hidden objectives). Build your sweaters quickly!

At the end of the third round, scores from each previous round are tallied together and the player with the highest total score (best sweaters) wins!