Global Handwashing Day 2027 is on Friday

About Global Handwashing Day

Washing hands with soap at key moments, such as after using the toilet and before handling food, helps stop the spread of germs that cause diarrheal and respiratory illness, including pneumonia, according to UNICEF. The habit is cheap and effective, yet the UN, drawing on 2025 WHO and UNICEF data, says about 1.7 billion people still have no place at home to wash their hands with soap and water. Global Handwashing Day aims at both problems: building the habit and closing the gap in facilities.

The Global Handwashing Partnership founded the day. The partnership, set up in 2001 and formerly called the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing, brings together government agencies, UN bodies, companies, nonprofits and researchers. The first Global Handwashing Day was held on October 15, 2008, during the UN's International Year of Sanitation. The partnership says more than 120 million children in over 70 countries washed their hands with soap that day.

Since then schools, health ministries and community groups have used the date to run demonstrations, build handwashing stations and simple devices such as tippy taps, and remind leaders that hygiene belongs in health planning. The partnership publishes planning tools for anyone who wants to hold an event, and its multi-year campaign message invites everyone to be a "handwashing hero."

Sources: Global Handwashing Partnership: About Global Handwashing Day, Global Handwashing Partnership: Who we are, Global Handwashing Partnership: Our history, UNICEF: Hygiene, United Nations: World Toilet Day (WHO/UNICEF hygiene figures), UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/61/192, International Year of Sanitation, 2008. How we check dates.

How to mark Global Handwashing Day

• Practice a full handwashing routine with children: wet, lather with soap, scrub every part of the hands for about 20 seconds, rinse and dry.
• Talk through the key times to wash: after using the toilet, after changing a diaper, before cooking and before eating.
• Check that soap and paper towels or a dryer are always stocked in the restrooms at your school, office or place of worship.
• Build a simple tippy tap or handwashing station for a garden, campsite or outdoor event.
• Support a reputable organization that brings water, soap and hygiene facilities to schools and clinics that lack them.

Global Handwashing Day dates