International Roma Day
Next: April 8, 2027
Celebrate Romani culture and voices.
The story
Where it comes from
International Roma Day marks 8 April 1971, when the first World Romani Congress opened in Orpington, on the edge of London. Delegates from Roma and Traveller communities across Europe asserted the Roma claim to be recognised as a full people, adopted a flag and an anthem, and named 8 April their international day. The Roma, now Europe's largest minority at an estimated 10 to 12 million people, trace their origins to northern India; their ancestors left in repeated migrations and had reached western Europe by the 15th century.
How it's celebrated
Roma communities and their friends hold concerts, readings, exhibitions and festivals of Romani music, language and history, and raise the Romani flag. The Council of Europe hosts an 'Opre Roma' Month in April, celebrating Roma culture across Europe, and governments and European institutions use the day to speak about the discrimination many Roma still face. Anyone can mark it by listening to Romani music or reading a Romani writer.
Did you know
- The Romani flag has a blue upper half for the sky and a green lower half for the earth, with a red sixteen-spoked wheel at its centre.
- The anthem, 'Gelem, Gelem', was a folk song already known to many Roma in the Balkans before the 1971 congress adopted it.
- Romani words still echo the languages of ancient India: jakh, 'eye', comes from the Sanskrit akṣi, and patrin, 'leaf', from patra.
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