High School Musical: The Musical: The Holiday Special is a musical television special created for Disney+ and written, produced and directed by Tim Federle. Inspired by the High School Musical film series, it featured the series' cast members Olivia Rodrigo, Joshua Bassett, Matt Cornett and Sofia Wylie amongst others, performing Christmas music and also previewed a snippet the second season of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series that released in May 2021.

As the production of the second season was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Federle discussed on a possibility of directing a Christmas film with the cast. Inspired by various reality television music and dance competition programs, Federle wanted the special to explore the insights of the cast on who they actually are, instead of their characters in the series. The show was filmed during the pandemic with strict restrictions, on multiple cities with Federle remotely directing and supervising them.

The special was released on December 11, 2020 with an accompanying soundtrack that featured acoustic version of two original songs written for the second season, was released three weeks before.