International Day of Families

Some days on the calendar are about buying and giving. This one is not. The International Day of Families, held on 15 May every year, is a quieter kind of day: a worldwide moment to notice the people we belong to, and to think about what holds a family together. Last checked: August 2026.

When is the International Day of Families?

It is fixed to 15 May every year, so unlike days tied to a particular Sunday it never drifts. Because the date is fixed, it lands on a different weekday each year. The next one is Saturday 15 May 2027.

See every family date together on our key family dates page.

The next few years

Where the day comes from

The International Day of Families was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in resolution 47/237 of 1993, and first observed in 1994. It was created to raise awareness of the issues that affect families and to reflect the importance the international community attaches to them. Each year the UN sets a fresh theme, drawing attention to a different aspect of family life, from wellbeing to the way families change across generations.

Unlike Mother's Day or Father's Day, it is not tied to one relationship or one kind of family. It holds space for all of them: the family you were born into, the one you built, the people who raised you and the people you are raising. That breadth is exactly what makes it a good day to step back and ask a simple question. What do we actually know about where we come from?

A lasting way to mark it

The families that feel richest are rarely the ones with the most. They are the ones who still know their own stories: the grandmother's childhood, the choices a parent made, the ordinary days that turned out to matter most. Those stories are told once and, too often, lost, because nobody thought to write them down while there was still time to ask.

This is the whole reason we built HeartTold. One of our friendly, patient agents calls your parent or grandparent each week, asks about their life in questions they love to answer, and keeps their replies in their own voice inside a private family archive that grows a little every week. There is no app for them to learn, just a phone call. Everything stays private, and is never used to train AI models.

A family is held together by its stories. This is a day to keep them.

If the International Day of Families is a good moment to begin, you can give HeartTold as a gift or start one for your own family today.

Related guides: questions to ask your parents, questions to ask your grandparents, and life story prompts.