The Events Calendar Setup: Create, Display and Customize Events

This article is a localized edition of the Japanese original. Read the Japanese original

The Events Calendar is a plugin that adds event management and a calendar to WordPress. You can publish seminars, trade shows, recurring meetups and other events in month, list and day calendar views. The core features are free; recurring events and the shortcode for embedding the calendar in a page are features of the paid Events Calendar Pro.

This article focuses on what the free version can do and walks through installation, creating events, adjusting the display, and customizing it in your theme. The settings and the free/Pro split were checked against the developer's documentation as of November 2026.

Install the plugin

In the admin screen, go to "Plugins → Add New" (プラグイン → 新規追加 in the Japanese UI), search for "The Events Calendar", install it and activate it. If you can use WP-CLI, this command does the same:

wp plugin install the-events-calendar --activate

After activation, an "Events" menu is added to the admin screen.

Basic settings (Events → Settings)

The settings are collected under "Events → Settings". These are the items worth checking first:

A few notes:

• After changing a slug, open "Settings → Permalinks" and click "Save Changes" to refresh the permalinks. This prevents the new URL from returning a 404.
• The first day of the week (Monday or Sunday) is not a plugin setting; it follows "Week Starts On" in WordPress "Settings → General".
• Date formats use PHP date format strings. For example, entering F j, Y displays dates like "December 15, 2026".

Create an event

Add events one at a time under "Events → Add New". The main fields on the edit screen are:

1. Title and description: Enter the event name and the details.
2. Date and time: Enter the start date, start time, end date and end time. For an all-day event, check "All Day". By default the site's time zone is used.
3. Venue: Create a new venue or pick a saved one. If you enter the venue name and address, they are shown on the event page.
4. Organizer: You can save the organizer's name, phone number, email address and website.
5. Categories and tags: Events have their own categories (event categories) for grouping.
6. When you are done, click "Publish".

Venues and organizers are saved as separate posts, so from the second time on you just select them. You can manage them under "Events → Venues" and "Events → Organizers".

Whether events are edited in the block editor is controlled by "Activate Block Editor for Events" under "Events → Settings → General".

Display the calendar

Free version: use the /events/ page

In the free version, the calendar is created automatically at the Events URL slug (by default https://example.com/events/). You don't need to create a page. To link to it from your main navigation, add this URL as a custom link under "Appearance → Menus".

Visitors can switch between views (month, list, day) with the buttons at the top of the calendar. You can turn off views you don't use with "Enable event views" on the "Display" tab.

Pro version: embed in a page with a shortcode

The tribe_events shortcode, which embeds the calendar in a page or post, works only when Events Calendar Pro is active. It does not work with the free version alone. In Pro, you set the view or category with attributes like these (type them, with square brackets, into a Shortcode block):

[tribe_events view="month"]
[tribe_events view="list" category="seminar"]

For view you can use month, list and day, plus the Pro views photo, week, map and summary.

Main differences between the free and Pro versions

To handle a weekly or monthly event with the free version, create one event per date. If there are many occurrences, consider the recurring events in Pro.

Check events with WP-CLI

Events are stored as the tribe_events post type. The start and end date-times are stored in the _EventStartDate and _EventEndDate meta fields.

# List events
wp post list --post_type=tribe_events --fields=ID,post_title,post_status

# Start and end date-time of one event (123 is the event ID)
wp post meta get 123 _EventStartDate
wp post meta get 123 _EventEndDate

To clean up old events, "Move to trash events older than" under "Events → Settings → General" is safer than deleting them with a command. They go to the trash, so you can restore anything removed by mistake.

Customize in your theme

Show upcoming events

To get upcoming events in a theme template, use tribe_get_events().

<?php
// Get the next 3 upcoming events
$upcoming = tribe_get_events( [
    'posts_per_page' => 3,
    'start_date'     => 'now',
] );

if ( $upcoming ) {
    echo '<ul class="upcoming-events">';
    foreach ( $upcoming as $event ) {
        printf(
            '<li><a href="%s">%s</a>（%s）</li>',
            esc_url( get_permalink( $event ) ),
            esc_html( get_the_title( $event ) ),
            esc_html( tribe_get_start_date( $event, false, 'F j, Y' ) )
        );
    }
    echo '</ul>';
}

The second argument of tribe_get_start_date() controls whether the time is included, and the third is the date format. These functions disappear when the plugin is deactivated, so in a theme check with function_exists( 'tribe_get_events' ) before calling them; that keeps the page from breaking with a fatal error if the plugin is turned off.

Override the view templates

To change how the calendar looks, copy the plugin's template files into your theme and edit the copies. The current views (Views V2) are overridden with this mapping:

The steps are:

1. Create a tribe/events/v2/ folder in your child theme (files in a parent theme are lost when the theme updates).
2. From the plugin's src/views/v2/, copy only the files you want to change, keeping the same folder structure.
3. Edit the copied files.

The comment at the top of each template file states where to put it to override it. If the folder structure is off by even one level, the override is ignored, so check this first when changes don't show up. The legacy views use a different tribe-events/ folder; don't mix the two.

Plugin updates can change the template contents, so compare your overridden files with the originals after each update.

Things to watch

• Recurring events, shortcode embedding, and the week and map views are Pro features. Check first whether the free version covers what you need.
• The Google Maps API key is issued in Google Cloud. Depending on usage, charges may apply, so restrict the key to the APIs and websites it is used for.
• As events pile up, the calendar page can get slower. Adjust with the automatic trashing of old events and the number of events per page on the "Display" tab.

Summary

• The Events Calendar lets you add events and a calendar at /events/ for free.
• Settings live under "Events → Settings". After changing a slug, save the permalinks again. The first day of the week follows the WordPress General settings.
• The shortcode for embedding in a page and recurring events are Pro features.
• In a theme, tribe_get_events() retrieves events, and you change the look by copying templates into tribe/events/v2/ in a child theme.

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