International Day of Happiness 2027

What is the International Day of Happiness?

International Day of Happiness 2027 is on Saturday 20 March 2027. It falls on 20 March every year.

The International Day of Happiness is a United Nations observance held on 20 March each year. The UN General Assembly created it in 2012 to recognise happiness and wellbeing as goals shared by people everywhere, and to encourage governments to measure progress by more than economic growth. It is often called World Happiness Day or simply Happiness Day; all three names refer to the same date.

In the UK the day is coordinated by Action for Happiness, a London-based charity founded in 2010, which runs the global campaign at dayofhappiness.net. Each year the day is also the launch date for the World Happiness Report, the annual ranking of countries by how people rate their own lives. In the 2026 report the UK placed 29th of 136 countries. It is not a bank holiday, and there is nothing to register for: most people mark it through their school, their workplace or a small act of kindness on the day.

The International Day of Happiness is a day for governments, organisations and individuals to pay attention to wellbeing as something worth measuring and improving, rather than a by-product of income. The UN’s own description calls happiness “a fundamental human goal” and asks for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes the happiness and well-being of all peoples”. The UN links this to its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, arguing that wellbeing and the environment should sit inside policy frameworks alongside economic measures.

For most people the day works at a far smaller scale. It is a prompt to check in on your own wellbeing, to do something for someone else and to notice what in daily life actually makes you feel good. Action for Happiness frames it around the idea that happiness is partly a skill, built by regular actions such as connecting with people, being active, taking notice of the present and giving to others. The charity lists the Dalai Lama as its patron.

When is the International Day of Happiness?

The day is always 20 March, so the weekday changes each year. In 2027 it falls on a Saturday, which means schools and workplaces will usually mark it on Friday 19 March or spread activities across the week beginning 15 March. In 2028 it is a Monday and in 2029 a Tuesday. The date sits at the turn of the seasons in the northern hemisphere: the spring equinox falls on 20 or 21 March, which is why the day is sometimes described as the first day of spring.

History of the International Day of Happiness

The idea came from Bhutan, which the UN notes has “recognized the value of national happiness over national income since the early 1970s” and adopted Gross National Happiness as a goal in place of Gross National Product. Bhutan led the push at the UN for happiness to be treated as a measure of development, and on 12 July 2012 the General Assembly adopted resolution 66/281 proclaiming 20 March the International Day of Happiness. The first observance followed on 20 March 2013.

The World Happiness Report dates from the same period and has become the fixture of the day, with each new edition released on or just before 20 March. In the UK, Action for Happiness, founded in 2010 by Lord Richard Layard, Sir Anthony Seldon, Sir Geoff Mulgan and Dr Mark Williamson, took on the public campaign, building a membership it now puts at more than 800,000 people in 193 countries.

The World Happiness Report and the UK’s ranking

The World Happiness Report is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Rankings are based on a three-year average of how people in each country rate their own lives on a scale from 0 to 10, using Gallup World Poll data. The 2026 report, published on 19 March 2026, covers 2023 to 2025 and ranks 136 countries.

Finland came first for a record ninth year in a row, with an average score of 7.764. Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica and Sweden completed the top five. The UK placed 29th, down from 23rd in the 2025 edition. The report notes that 2026 was the second year running in which no English-speaking country made the top ten: New Zealand was 11th, Ireland 13th, Australia 15th, the United States 23rd and Canada 25th.

The 2026 edition focused on social media. Its headline finding was that heavy social media use appears to be contributing to the fall in wellbeing among young people in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, particularly among girls, with feeds built around algorithms linked to lower life satisfaction and messaging-style platforms linked to higher. The 2027 report is expected around 20 March 2027; its focus has not been announced.

What happens in the UK

Action for Happiness runs the day’s public campaign from dayofhappiness.net. For 2026 the campaign theme was “Social Media & Happiness”, matching the report, with three suggested actions: choose how you use social media, connect with people in real life rather than scrolling, and curate your feeds towards content that lifts you. The charity also invites people to sign up as a Happiness Champion, join a ten-day happiness challenge, share its free monthly action calendar and attend online events with wellbeing researchers. No theme for 2027 had been published on the organiser’s site at the time of writing.

Beyond the official campaign, the day is widely picked up by schools, NHS trusts, councils, universities and employers as a wellbeing hook in the last weeks of the spring term. The World Happiness Report rankings landing on the same day guarantee news coverage, usually focused on where the UK sits and why.

How to take part

At work. Keep it simple and keep it voluntary. Ideas that cost little:

• Start the day with a short team check-in where everyone names one thing that went well this week.
• Share Action for Happiness’s monthly calendar on the intranet and pick one action for the team to try together.
• Encourage a proper lunch break away from screens, ideally outside.
• Run a thank-you wall, physical or digital, where colleagues leave notes of appreciation.
• Signpost your employee assistance programme or mental health first aiders, so support is visible on a day people are thinking about it.

At school. The day fits assemblies, PSHE and form time:

• Run an assembly on what happiness is and where the day came from, using the Bhutan story as a starting point.
• Ask pupils to write three good things from the week; younger children can draw them.
• Hold a kindness challenge for the day or the week, with a class target rather than individual scores.
• Use the World Happiness Report rankings in geography or maths to compare countries and discuss what the numbers can and cannot tell you.
• Give staff the same attention with a short staffroom check-in.

At home. Call someone you have not spoken to for a while, go for a walk, cook a meal with the people you live with, or write a short message to someone who helped you recently. The small, specific action is the point.

Related awareness days

• World Kindness Day on 13 November
• Random Acts of Kindness Day in February
• Mental Health Awareness Week in May
• World Wellbeing Week in June
• World Mental Health Day on 10 October