Sibling Season

“Sibling Season” in donor conception refers to the period when people are more likely to unexpectedly discover that they are donor conceived (conceived through sperm, egg or embryo donation) through commercial DNA test kits and then also to discover that they suddenly, and unexpectedly, have donor siblings.

“Sibling Season” takes place from January to April of each year. This is when the results of Thanksgiving/Christmas/Holiday DNA test kit ‘gifts’ are processed.

Ancestry normally starts one of it’s big annual sales on ‘Black Friday’ and DNA results start arriving about a month later.

We had over 150 newly discovered Donor Conceived People (DCP) join the Donor Conceived UK community from January to April 2025. We expect these numbers to rise in subsequent Sibling Seasons.

This is an excellent podcast about Commercial DNA test kits as ‘gifts’: The Gift, Jenny Kleeman. Donor conception is covered in episode 1 of series 1, “Fraud”, and episode 6 of series 2, “Superdonor”.