The Best WordPress Themes for Event Sites

An illustration of 3 mobile phone calendar each with a logo above. Divi, Twenty Twenty One, and Kadence respectively

With thousands of WordPress themes available, it can be hard to choose one for your site. One way to narrow down your options is to think about your site’s goals. 

On an event site, you want a theme that will showcase your events beautifully. Beyond that, the theme you choose will depend on your individual needs and skills. Are you a developer who’s super comfortable with customizations? Or are you a newbie looking for a theme that works out of the box? No matter which camp you fall into, there’s a theme for you.

We built The Events Calendar plugin to work with WordPress’ default themes and most themes that follow WordPress standards. In this article, we’ve organized our theme picks based on skill level to help you find the right theme for your site. 

Let’s start off with recommendations for our beginners and work our way up to more advanced users.

Twenty Twenty-One

Level: Beginner

We can guarantee calendar compatibility with any one of WordPress’s built-in themes. Twenty Twenty-One is WordPress’s newest incarnation. Switching to this theme is usually a first line of defense when you’re having an issue on your site, like a funky layout or theme conflict.

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What we love about it: Right out of the box, this theme works seamlessly without any changes needed.

Next steps: The background color will automatically inherit the theme color, but you can change it in the WordPress Customizer under The Events Calendar > General.

Bonus points: Twenty Twenty-One has a version that is compatible with the upcoming Full Site Editor for WordPress, so you can test it out before the official release.

Divi theme

Level: Beginner – Intermediate

This theme and page builder from Elegant Themes is another option to showcase your calendar that gives you lots of customizable options for your event pages.

wordpress theme

What we love about it: You can customize your entire site, including your event pages, using the WordPress Customizer with Divi.

Next steps: If you ever run into problems with the display, our compatibility extension can usually fix those issues for you. 

Bonus points: You can also try the premium Divi Events Calendar plugin to add further integrations with events modules. 

Kadence Theme

Level: Beginner – Intermediate

Kadence is a free theme (with a membership option) that comes with everything you need to create a custom event site, including layouts and blocks for every page. It’s easy to get started, plus you get a live preview of changes.

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What we love about it: You’re prompted to install starter templates once you activate the Kadence theme. Choose one and it will apply the styles to all of your pages so that your site maintains a consistent look. Get comfortable with the WordPress Customizer, where you’ll find most of the customization options, including options added specifically for The Events Calendar.

Next steps: Add Kadence Blocks, a free collection of blocks that is compatible with the Block Editor, for super customizable layouts for your events.

Bonus points: Use WordPress’s fastest theme and plugins to turn your event site into an online course site by using the Online Course starter template. From there, you can use Event Tickets Plus to sell tickets to your course and track all of your attendees right from the WordPress Dashboard.

Avada Theme

Level: Advanced

Avada is a theme and page builder that plays nicely with The Events Calendar plugins. We think of this one as an advanced option because you may need to make some adjustments to get the display you want. There are many customizable options to create different layouts.

wordpress theme

What we love about it: Avada includes pre-built website designs, three of which feature The Events Calendar. These pre-built templates are Avada Church, Avada Beer, and Avada University. Avada really shines with single event creation, which is fully supported by the Block Editor. You can create individual layouts for each of your events separately, making for a really unique event experience.

Next steps: You may see some display issues related to the events page title and the month view page, but these are easily remedied with Avada settings and additional CSS.

Bonus points: With Events Calendar Pro, take your customized calendar anywhere on your site by embedding the [tribe_events] shortcode.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to remember that every website is different and there is no one-size-fits-all theme for everyone. Theme compatibility can vary from site to site, so always test updates and customizations on a staging site first to make sure that everything works nicely before going live. Happy calendaring!