Every one of these is a real day, subject, kept by real people in the far lands who are trying to help. The court observes them all. The court observes them the way it observes everything: with a ceremony, a fanfare, and no measurable change in behaviour.
If you run an awareness programme, this is a planning calendar. If you do not, it is a list of the days on which somebody will try to take your money, which is a more useful thing to own than it sounds.
The year, as the realm keeps it
| When | The observance | What the court does |
|---|---|---|
| 26 to 30 January | Data Privacy Week. The day itself is the 28th. In these isles it lands beside the tax deadline on the 31st, which is the week the fake tax letters arrive. | The court reviews what it knows about its subjects, discovers it is a great deal, and files it somewhere safe. Nia asks who else has a copy. The council adjourns. |
| 10 February 2026 | Safer Internet Day. Second Tuesday of February. The 2026 theme is "AI Aware: Safe, Smart, and in Control", and it is aimed squarely at schools. | Gerald is invited to address the children. He apologises eleven times and produces a poem about autumn. |
| 31 March | World Backup Day. Placed the day before April Fools' by its own founders, on the grounds that only a fool skips a backup. | The Feast of the Restore. The disk is chosen by lot. It has worked twice. Dame Maud tests hers in February and does not attend. |
| 1 April | April Fools' Day. Not a security observance. It is on this calendar because the day before it is. | The Fool works. Everyone else attempts a joke and the Fool is obliged to explain, gently, why it is not one. He keeps the list. |
| 14 April 2026 | Identity Management Day. Second Tuesday of April, run by the National Cybersecurity Alliance. | Staple is posted to the gate and refuses everybody. The poster exists. The horse is unavailable for comment, as ever. |
| 7 May 2026 | World Password Day. First Thursday of May. | The paddock opens. Six passwords go over the fence and two come back with a neigh. The verdicts are published. |
| 12 May | International Anti-Ransomware Day. Declared by INTERPOL in 2022. | The Duke sends his regrets, as he does every year, from a house he no longer fully controls. |
| All of October | Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The 2026 theme is "Don't Make It Easy For Them". | The Month of Difficulty. The court makes everything difficult, for itself, and expects a badge. |
| 27 November 2026 | Black Friday. Not an awareness day. The opposite: the day the fake shop, the fake discount and the fake delivery notice all work best, because everybody is expecting a parcel. | The market opens. The court buys four of something. The wanted notice goes back up on the gate, where nobody reads it, being busy. |
| 30 November 2026 | Computer Security Day, and in 2026 also Cyber Monday. Computer Security Day is fixed on the 30th and has been since 1988, when it was founded in the wake of the internet's first great worm. Cyber Monday moves, was coined in 2005 by a retail trade body, and only sometimes lands here. | The court observes both, simultaneously, and has never once noticed the difficulty. |
| December | The delivery season. Not a day and not official: a reliable annual spike in fake parcel notices, which work because a real parcel is genuinely coming. | Sir Reginald is dispatched with the season's greetings. They arrive in March. Nothing about them is urgent, which the court now considers a security feature. |
And one that comes round every month
The second Tuesday. Patch Tuesday: the day the largest maker of the software on your desk releases its security fixes, every month, since October 2003. It is a Tuesday rather than a Monday so that the people who have to install it get a day to prepare, which is the most thoughtful sentence in this entire document.
The court does not observe Patch Tuesday. The court observes the Feast of the Patch, which is held whenever somebody remembers, and which the Idiot Admin has now postponed four hundred consecutive times.
Dame Maud has been doing it on Tuesdays for forty years. Patch Tuesday is twenty-three years old. Nobody has ever told her, and the court has never worked out how she knew.
The two dates worth more than the rest
31 March into 1 April. World Backup Day sits the day before April Fools' because its founders put it there deliberately, and this court has an actual Fool on the payroll. He objects to the backup on the Tuesday and is proved right on the Wednesday, or the other way about. Either way somebody has not tested a restore.
30 November, in 2026 only. These two have nothing to do with each other and that is the joke. Computer Security Day was founded in 1988, after a worm took out a tenth of the machines then on the internet, by people who had just watched it happen. Cyber Monday was coined in 2005, in a press release, by a retail trade body that had noticed a spike in Monday sales. One is a memorial. The other is a marketing term. Every few years the calendar sits them on the same square, and the older one has to share its day with an invitation to buy quickly from a stranger.
The court observes both, simultaneously, and has never once noticed the difficulty.
Sire, I have counted eleven ceremonies and one Chatelaine. The Chatelaine does not attend any of them and is the only reason the kingdom is still standing.
The Fool exaggerates, as is his office. Dame Maud attends the Feast of the Restore every year. She simply does the testing in February, alone, in advance, and arrives to eat.
When is it, exactly
When is Cybersecurity Awareness Month?
All of October, every year. The 2026 theme is "Don't Make It Easy For Them". The court keeps its October material here.
When is Patch Tuesday?
The second Tuesday of every month. Not the first, which is the guess everybody makes.
When is World Backup Day?
31 March, every year. The day before April Fools', on purpose.
When is World Password Day?
The first Thursday of May, which is 7 May in 2026.
When is Black Friday 2026?
27 November. Cyber Monday follows on 30 November, which in 2026 is also Computer Security Day. Neither of the shopping days is an awareness day; they are on this calendar because they are when people get robbed.
When is Safer Internet Day 2026?
10 February. Second Tuesday of February, and the 2026 theme is "AI Aware: Safe, Smart, and in Control".
A caution about the dates themselves
Several of these move every year and are worth checking before you plan against them: Safer Internet Day is the second Tuesday of February, Identity Management Day the second Tuesday of April, and World Password Day the first Thursday of May. Black Friday follows the American harvest feast and moves with it. Themes are announced annually and change.
Everything above was checked against its organisers in September 2026. The court will restate it each January, at a ceremony, with trumpets.
Whatever you are building for one of these, the Royal Armoury issues the posters free, in colour and in black and white, at A4 and US Letter, with a slide deck that has real speaker notes in it.
The terms of issue
Free to use unaltered: at work, in a classroom, in a newsletter, on any noticeboard that will have them. Not for resale. The credit is already printed on the thing, so there is nothing for you to add.
That is the whole treaty. The crown's lawyers are disappointed by its brevity and have been informed that the matter is closed.
Requests, questions and corrections reach the court at [email protected].
Mark them all, subject. Attend none of them. Do the thing on an ordinary Tuesday when nobody is watching, which is how it has always actually been done.