Comic Relief / Red Nose Day UK 2027

What is Red Nose Day?

Comic Relief / Red Nose Day UK 2027 is on Friday 19 March 2027.

That is our working date, not yet an official one. Comic Relief, the charity that runs Red Nose Day, says it is still finalising the date for 2027. Since the campaign went annual in 2022 it has always fallen on a Friday in the second half of March, so 19 March is the likely slot. We will update this page as soon as Comic Relief confirms it.

The most recent Red Nose Day was on Friday 20 March 2026. The night of television, hosted by Davina McCall from MediaCity in Salford, closed on £30,004,040, which Comic Relief says will help more than 1.3 million people in the UK and around the world with food, a safe place to sleep and a life free from fear and harm.

Red Nose Day is Comic Relief’s flagship fundraising campaign. Schools, workplaces, families and community groups spend the weeks before the day raising money, and the campaign ends with a live evening of comedy, music and appeals on BBC One, BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. The red nose, sold in the run-up to the day, is the symbol that ties it together.

The idea has not changed since the 1980s: use comedy to raise money for people living in poverty and facing injustice, in the UK and abroad.

When is Red Nose Day 2027?

Red Nose Day has no fixed date. Comic Relief chooses a Friday in March each year and announces it in the autumn or winter before, alongside the first details of that year’s noses and challenges. The date moves to fit the BBC schedule and school terms.

These are the recent dates and the totals announced at the end of each night of television:

Earlier annual campaigns raised £55,028,000 in 2021, £42,790,147 in 2022 and £35,310,407 in 2023. Red Nose Day 2025 also marked 40 years since Comic Relief launched, by which point the charity had raised more than £1.6 billion.

A short history

Comic Relief launched in 1985, founded by the comedy writer Richard Curtis and the comedian Lenny Henry in response to the famine in Ethiopia. The first Red Nose Day followed in 1988: more than 30 million people watched a special episode of Blackadder and the Young Ones on University Challenge, and the night raised £15 million.

For most of its life Red Nose Day was held every two years, and from the early 2000s it alternated with Sport Relief, Comic Relief’s other telethon, so that Red Nose Day fell in odd-numbered years and Sport Relief in even ones. The peak came in 2011, when the campaign raised £108,436,277.

In December 2021 Comic Relief announced that Red Nose Day would become an annual event every March, and that there would be no more Sport Relief telethons after the 2020 edition. Sport Relief continues as a year-round brand built around sporting challenges, such as the BIG Sport Relief Swim each September, with at least half of the money raised going to Comic Relief’s Sport for Change projects.

What happens on the day in the UK

Schools and offices hold their events during the day, and the live show starts at 7pm on BBC One. It mixes comedy sketches and specials of popular programmes with filmed reports from the projects Comic Relief funds, and the running total is revealed in stages through the evening. In 2026 the show was presented by Davina McCall, Joel Dommett, Katherine Ryan, Nick Mohammed and Catherine Tate.

The weeks before the day are built around big public challenges. In 2026 Greg James rode a 1,000km tandem from Weymouth to Edinburgh for Radio 1’s Longest Ride, raising £4,225,939. In 2025 Billy Monger set an Ironman record and Jamie Laing ran an ultramarathon, each raising more than £1 million.

Red noses change every year. For 2026 Comic Relief introduced Design-Yer-Nose, its first customisable red nose, alongside a collector pack designed with the artist Mr Doodle. Sainsbury’s has been the retail partner for more than 27 years, and noses are also sold online.

How schools take part

Schools are the heart of Red Nose Day. Comic Relief publishes free resources each year through its schools fundraising hub, with separate routes for early years, primary and secondary settings. The main items are:

• Primary and secondary fundraising packs (PDF), with tips, ideas and posters to plan the day.
• A letter to parents and carers and a school council guide, so pupils can run the planning themselves.
• Posters, certificates, moneyboxes, collection labels and paying-in slips for early years, primary and secondary schools.
• Recipes and a quiz bundle for bake sales and class quizzes.

The most common school activities are a non-uniform or red-themed dress-up day for a suggested donation, a bake sale, a joke competition or talent show, a sponsored silence or walk, and selling red noses in the playground. Many schools set up an online fundraising page so parents can give directly rather than sending cash in, and schools that share their story can enter Comic Relief’s Nosey Awards.

Red Nose Day sits close to World Book Day in the school calendar, so some schools combine the two into one dressing-up week.

Taking part at work and at home

Comic Relief publishes a workplace pack alongside the school ones, with the same mix of posters, paying-in slips and ideas. Typical office fundraisers are a dress-down day, a bake-off, a quiz or a sponsored team challenge. If your employer matches staff fundraising, ask before the day.

At home, the simplest ways to take part are to buy a red nose, watch the show and donate during the evening, or sponsor someone taking on a challenge. If you are a UK taxpayer, tick the Gift Aid box when you donate: the charity can then claim an extra 25p for every £1 you give at no cost to you, as the gov.uk Gift Aid guidance explains.

Where the money goes

Comic Relief does not run projects itself. It makes grants to other organisations, in the UK and in a number of countries overseas, and publishes a list of the organisations it funds. Its current strategy has four strands: easing the daily consequences of poverty, tackling the injustices that keep people poor, climate justice, and sport for change.

In the year to 31 July 2025 the charity reported income of £51.1 million and made 237 grants totalling £31.3 million. The largest UK grants went to food charities and community funders, including FareShare (£1.97 million), the London Community Foundation (£1.24 million), Groundwork UK, Feeding Britain and The Bread and Butter Thing. The largest single international grant that year went to the Samburu Women’s Trust in Kenya.

Related awareness days

Red Nose Day is one of a handful of big charity fundraising days in the UK school and office year. BBC Children in Need in November is the other major BBC telethon, and Christmas Jumper Day in December raises money for Save the Children. In the autumn, Jeans for Genes Day and the Macmillan Coffee Morning use the same dress-down and bake-sale formats.