We’re building on the progress made in the past year by continuing our structured approach to the annual diary.

Our goal remains to provide clear rhythms and spaces dedicated to senior leaders, ministries, and regional gatherings. This structure supports intentional moments for celebration, training, and connection across our movement, creating an annual cycle that prioritises our leaders’ growth and our churches’ health.

As you plan your 2026 dates, please review the updated calendar structure and submit your dates by Monday 18th February 2025 to ensure we can prioritise these in the national diary.

Yearly rhythms

First Third of the Year (Jan – Apr): Focus on Senior Leaders

Focus on learning communities, investment in church leadership, and senior leaders.
This culminates with the Vineyard Leaders Gathering in April.

Second Third of the Year (May – Aug): Focus on Ministries and Networks

The focus in this third is on Network events that invest in ministry staff, pastoral staff, and volunteer teams. This also includes ministry-specific programs like Soul Spa, Worship Gathering, or Multiply Summit, and culminates with Dreaming the Impossible.

Final Third of the Year (Sep – Dec): Focus on Regions

This third provides a flexible period for regional gatherings (including Equip & Ignite if appropriate).
Any region can use any weekend in the block indicated for their regional events, as the only other events happening are other regional events. Where we might want to steer (or help land dates) is where we have a visiting speaker who could be strategically helpful in multiple regions. This term culminates with The Cause to Live For.

A more focussed annual cycle

The diary will start with investing in senior leadership and trans-local leaders, leading into the Vineyard Leadership Gathering having journeyed with senior leaders.

VLG provides a celebration moment and a springboard to catalyse local ministries and church planting. So the second term focuses on ministries, pastoral staff and key volunteers, with events tailored to their ongoing training, equipping, and health.

After DTI and the summer, we conclude our annual cycle by having greater flexibility for gathering in regions and meeting the localised need for gathering together.

This intentionally places a Tier A event in each term but gives more focus to how this works in our cycle.

Caveats

• There’s an exception to every rule, if we’re too rigid we restrict movement.
• Ireland has the freedom to innovate their diary, but the same boundaries exist around VLG, Learning Communities and ALG. They will receive the same support from Comms.
• DTI runs its own diary, which is carefully tailored to lead into the summer festival with momentum and (dates are still added to the national diary) to avoid diary clashes.
• Vineyard Leadership College follows the academic year and needs flexibility to plan its diary to suit the rhythm of the academic year, without double-booking the national diary.
• Vineyard Worship are planning regional retreats and these can fit into either third.
• This cycle mostly applies to public-facing events.
• Closed-door events tend to follow termly patterns, eg. VLT, Trustees.
• Any system, including this, needs space for anomalies if we want to see growth.
• We’re aware that in a growing movement, any diary system will not be fully satisfactory to each individual, but we’re confident that this evolution is a helpful step forward for the movement.

How will this look?

With this improved system, we can more clearly define sections of the diary, with space blocked out around the Vineyard Leaders’ Gathering, Dreaming the Impossible and The Cause to Live For.

Submitting 2026 dates

As you plan your 2026 dates, please review the calendar structure and submit your dates by Monday 18th February 2025 to ensure we can prioritise these in the national diary. At this point we will sign-off dates and begin creating the 2026 diary.

Dates can be submitted after this date but, in the event of a clash, the priority will be given to the dates that were submitted within the deadline and that are already confirmed in the national diary.

NB. Please do not confirm venues, sign contracts, invite speakers or pay deposits until your date is confirmed.

Thank you for your help and feedback as we prepare a system that works for us all and serves the movement well. If you have any questions please email [email protected]. Thank you.