ACT UP at 40 London Calendar Launch: A celebration of 40 years of resistance and collective power!
World AIDS Day 2026 Event - The Advocacy Academy at The Liberation Centre 6.30-8.30pm on Friday 23rd October 2026.
In 2027, ‘AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power’ (ACT UP) turns 40. To mark four decades of radical HIV/AIDS activism, The Advocacy Academy will launch the ACT UP at 40: Celebrating Resistance and Demanding Healthcare for All — Calendar 2027, bringing together previously unseen photographs and footage from ACT UP chapters around the world alongside daily reminders of protest.
Calendars will be on sale for the first time! Pre-orders will soon be available - watch this space.
On the night we will launch ‘ADOPT AN ACT UP VETERAN’ where a new generation of change-makers eager to change the world and committed to confront Gilead’s price blocking UK access to groundbreaking HIV prevention tool lenacapavir will be paired by ACT UP activist veterans to build friendships and create strategic protest plans to continue fighting for access to healthcare and medication for all.
The launch will be accompanied by a conversation with activists, photographers and filmmakers who documented and participated in the early years of ACT UP London and a new generation of organisers to ask: What can ACT UP teach us now? Followed by ACT UP’s finest DJ Chano Gillett.
Tickets are donation based and there are very limited spaces - all profits go to support the calendar tour and the ‘Fund Healthcare Not Warfare’ international demo in 2027. Please donate to ACT UP London here.
ABOUT ACT UP
“Plague! We are in the middle of a fucking plague … what are we gonna do about it?” Larry Kramer demanded at the New York LGBT+ Centre on 10 March 1987. Hundreds gathered that day to establish ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power: united in anger and committed to non-violent direct action to end the AIDS crisis.
Forty years on, that urgency still reverberates. As cuts to HIV and AIDS funding put millions of lives at risk, the answer remains the same: ACT UP until there is healthcare for all.
This calendar brings together ACT UP chapters — old, new and newly reactivated — from around the world. It celebrates the extraordinary diversity of our creative activism and the power of our insurrectionary imaginations: from mass die-ins in Trafalgar square and pharmaceutical occupations to political funerals and ashes thrown over the White House gates.
ACT UP has saved countless lives, including my own, and shown what people power can achieve. This calendar is an international kaleidoscope of that history, creativity and resistance — and an invitation to pass the flame on.
ABOUT THE ADVOCACY ACADEMY
The Advocacy Academy is a home for youth organising in the UK. For us, this means we build the power of young people with lived experience of injustice to develop their own political identity, organise a community rooted in joy and solidarity, and take action to address the most pressing issues of our time
Testimonials
“We are so grateful for the opportunity to be seen and share our story. The ACT UP Latina/o Caucus continues to challenge stigma and assert the visibility of LGBT Latinos.” Julian de Mayo, ACT UP Latina/o Caucus
“This calendar has connected us with ACT UP chapters across the world and strengthened our sense of pride and belonging. It has helped us understand our local history as part of an international movement fighting for four decades.” ACT UP Argentina
“Working with surviving members on this calendar reignited their pride in what they achieved, and offers a chance to share that flame with ACT UP chapters and followers around the world.” Mark Andrew, ACT UP Montreal
DRESS CODE - Dress to Celebrate!
ACCESSIBILITY - The venue is wheelchair accessible via a lift. There are accessible toilets. If you have any accessibility requirements please email actuplondonhealthcareforall@gmail.com
