World Fair Play Day
Next: May 19, 2027
Shake hands with the other side.
The story
Where it comes from
World Fair Play Day celebrates sport played in a spirit of friendship, solidarity, tolerance and inclusion. The idea came from sport itself: in 2020 the International Fair Play Committee, Panathlon International and the European Fair Play Movement created a World Fair Play Day, first marked on 7 September in Brussels. On 1 July 2024, on Hungary's initiative, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 78/310, proclaiming 19 May as World Fair Play Day and recognising that the spirit of fair play is deeply rooted in the Olympic ideal. The first UN observance was held on 19 May 2025.
How it's celebrated
The UN invites governments, sports bodies and everyone else to raise awareness of the day and of what fair play means: keeping to the rules, respecting opponents, and saying no to violence and doping. In Brussels the Manneken Pis statue is dressed in its own fair-play costume. For the rest of us it is a good day to shake an opponent's hand, applaud the other side, or tell a child about a famous act of sportsmanship.
Did you know
- At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the Canadian sailor Lawrence Lemieux left a race in which he was lying second to rescue two Singaporean sailors, Joseph Chan and Siew Shaw Her, whose boat had capsized; the jury gave him his second-place points back.
- The International Fair Play Committee was founded in 1963 at the initiative of the French tennis champion Jean Borotra.
- Manneken Pis's fair-play costume, donated in 2021, joined a wardrobe of more than 1,000 outfits.
Coming up next
- Vesak · May 20, 2027
- World Bee Day · May 20, 2027
- World Metrology Day · May 20, 2027
- International Tea Day · May 21, 2027
- World Day for Cultural Diversity · May 21, 2027
- International Day for Biological Diversity · May 22, 2027