I’ve relied on Google Calendar for many years, as it used to automatically include key holiday and awareness month references. Lately, I noticed that significant cultural events like Pride Month and Black History Month are no longer appearing on my calendar by default.
Has anyone else encountered this problem? I’m curious if there’s been a change in Google’s approach to which cultural observances are displayed automatically. It was so handy to have these days already marked without needing to input them myself.
I’ve gone through my calendar settings but can’t seem to find how to recover these missing entries. Is there a way to reinstate these default observance markers, or do we need to individually subscribe to different calendars to access this info?
I would greatly appreciate any advice or information on this change. Thanks so much!
yeah, i noticed that too! just check your settings for ‘add calendar’ and then look for ‘holidays and observances’. it’s a bummer they took the auto feature away, but at least you can still add them back manually.
Google keeps pulling this stuff - features you rely on just vanish without warning.
Forget digging through their ever-changing settings. I’d automate the whole thing. Set up a workflow that grabs cultural events from multiple sources and dumps them straight into your calendar.
I built something like this when our team needed holiday tracking across different regions. It checks for new cultural events weekly and syncs directly to Google Calendar. Never miss Pride Month or Black History Month again.
Best part? You pick which observances you want instead of letting Google decide what stays or goes.
Latenode makes this dead simple. Connect event databases to your calendar and everything stays synced automatically.
Been dealing with this exact headache since I started managing team calendars at work. Google ditched the auto inclusion feature because people kept complaining about missing or wrong cultural observances.
What works is setting up a simple sync that pulls from reliable sources. I use the State Department’s cultural calendar API and a few nonprofit feeds that focus on awareness months.
Takes 5 minutes to set up through an automation platform. Pull observances monthly and push them straight into your Google Calendar. No more digging through Google’s messy subscription options or dealing with their spotty coverage.
I grab events 60 days ahead so nothing sneaks up on me. Way more reliable than letting Google decide which cultural events deserve calendar space.
Yeah, Google changed this around late 2022. I do event planning and noticed it immediately since I depend on these dates. They restructured their calendar service to meet different regional rules about what counts as ‘official’ holidays vs cultural observances. Used to be automatic, now you’ve got to dig into ‘Browse calendars of interest’ and manually add the observance calendars you want. Quality’s all over the place too. I’d skip Google’s options and go straight to Library of Congress calendar feeds and the UN observances calendar instead. Both sync perfectly with Google Calendar and blow away anything Google offers by default. Takes maybe 10 minutes to set up but you’ll get everything you’re looking for.
Had this same problem about six months ago while doing quarterly reports that needed awareness months. All the cultural observances just vanished after a Google update. Turns out Google moved them to a separate calendar subscription system. You’ve got to manually subscribe to “Holidays in [Your Country]” now - it covers major cultural observances, but coverage is hit or miss depending where you are. I ended up subscribing to multiple calendars from places like the Smithsonian and other cultural institutions for better coverage. Way more detailed than Google’s basic stuff ever was. Pretty annoying since everything used to be integrated, but honestly the manual setup gives you more control over what shows up.