International Day of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
Next: October 17, 2027
Pass on what your grandmother taught you.
The story
Where it comes from
UNESCO's General Conference proclaimed the International Day of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in November 2023, on an initiative led by Poland with Bangladesh, Botswana, Morocco, Panama, the Republic of Korea, Rwanda and Slovakia. It falls on 17 October because on that date in 2003 UNESCO adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible heritage is living heritage: the songs, dances, stories, festivals, crafts, foodways and know-how that communities pass from one generation to the next. The first edition was held in 2024.
How it's celebrated
UNESCO invites the countries that have joined the 2003 Convention, and anyone else who cares about it, to hold events and activities that show the variety of living heritage and why it needs safeguarding; in 2024 they ran from September into November. The most personal way to mark it is to learn something from an elder, whether a family recipe, a song or a craft, and pass it on.
Did you know
- Singapore's hawker culture, where Chinese, Malay, Indian and other cooking traditions meet in community dining rooms, was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2020.
- The kebaya was inscribed in 2024 on a joint nomination by Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, the largest Southeast Asian nomination yet by number of countries.
- The Spring Festival, the Chinese people's celebration of the traditional New Year, was added to the same list in 2024.
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