This article is the field reference for CSV imports in The Events Calendar. It covers every supported column for events, venues, organizers, virtual events, RSVPs, tickets, and ECP additional fields — along with downloadable example files you can use as a starting point.

For step-by-step instructions on running the import, see Importing Events from a CSV File.

Each column in a CSV file corresponds to a field that would be filled in manually when creating an event, organizer, venue, ticket, or RSVP in the WordPress editor. If a column name doesn’t match a recognized field, it won’t be included in the import. The field names and example data below are the recommended column headings to use in your files.

💡 Use YYYY-MM-DD for all dates. Some date formats are ambiguous — for example, 05/06/2016 could be read as May 6th or June 5th depending on locale. The ISO format YYYY-MM-DD is always unambiguous. If you need to use the day-first international format, use hyphens rather than slashes (e.g. 05-06-2016).

CSV Fields

Venues

Organizers

Events

Import or create your Venues and Organizers before importing Events. The event importer matches venues and organizers by exact name, so those records must already exist for the association to be made.

💡 While comma-separated values are technically supported in the Venue Name field, by default each event can only be assigned one venue. Specifying multiple venues only has an effect if multiple venue support has been enabled. In general, specify a single venue name here.

Virtual Events

With Events Calendar Pro installed, the following additional fields are available for virtual and hybrid events.

RSVPs

Import RSVPs after importing the events they belong to, since RSVPs must be associated with existing events.

WooCommerce Tickets

Import tickets after importing the events they belong to. Note that only WooCommerce Tickets can be imported via CSV.

A separate example CSV file for WooCommerce Tickets is not available. Use the RSVP example file as a base and add the Ticket Price and/or Ticket SKU columns as needed. When running the import, select Tickets (not RSVPs) from the content type dropdown. Make sure the Event Name field in your ticket CSV matches the Event Name in your events CSV exactly, or no tickets will be imported.

Additional Fields

If you have Events Calendar Pro and have created custom additional fields, those fields will appear in the CSV importer as available columns to map. The column name to use in your CSV is the label you gave the field when you created it. The following table shows which field types are supported by the importer:

Field Type Glossary

The field type column in each table above uses the following definitions:

• HTML — Accepts HTML markup. Also runs through wpautop(), so two consecutive newlines are interpreted as a paragraph break, just as in the WordPress editor.
• String — Accepts most text including numbers and special characters. Newlines are typically ignored.
• Boolean — Accepts true/false, 1/0, or yes/no. Not case-sensitive. When left blank the default is applied, which is typically false.
• Integer — Accepts whole numbers only.
• Date — Accepts formatted dates. Use ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2025-12-31) for unambiguous results. For the North American MM/DD/YYYY format use slashes. For the international DD-MM-YYYY format use hyphens.
• Time — Accepts formatted times in ISO 8601 HH:MM:SS format (e.g. 23:59:59).
• URL — Accepts full URLs including the protocol (e.g. https://).
• Comma Separated — Accepts a comma-separated list of values. “Concert, Barbecue” is interpreted as two separate values: “Concert” and “Barbecue”. If you’re not exporting from Excel or a similar tool, make sure to properly escape fields containing commas so they aren’t treated as column separators.
• Email Address — Accepts any string, but prefers a valid email address format.
• Phone Number — For proper internationalization, include the full number with country code and leading + (e.g. +1-800-867-5309).

Adding Custom Columns to CSV Imports

If you have custom data that isn’t covered by the built-in fields — for example, post meta stored by another plugin, or your own custom meta keys — you can add those columns to the importer using the following snippet.

Define your custom fields in the $custom_import_data array: the array key is the meta key that will be saved to the database, and the value is the label that will appear in the importer’s column mapping dropdown. The snippet handles registration, processing, and saving automatically.

class TEC_CSV_Import_Custom_Metadata {
    /**
     * Define your custom data here.
     * key   => the meta key that will be used to save the data
     * value => the label shown in the column mapping dropdown
     *
     * @var string[]
     */
    public $custom_import_data = [
        '_tribe_events_status' => 'Event Status',
        'meta_key_1'           => 'Meta Data 1',
        'meta_key_2'           => 'Meta Data 2',
    ];

    public function __construct() {
        add_filter( 'tribe_events_importer_event_column_names', [ $this, 'add_column_name' ] );
        add_filter( 'tribe_events_csv_import_event_additional_fields', [ $this, 'process_custom_data' ] );
        add_action( 'tribe_events_update_meta', [ $this, 'save_custom_data' ], 10, 3 );
    }

    public function add_column_name( $column_names ) {
        foreach ( $this->custom_import_data as $key => $value ) {
            $column_names[ $key ] = $value;
        }
        return $column_names;
    }

    public function process_custom_data() {
        $extra_fields['tec_import_event_status'] = 'tec_import_event_status';
        foreach ( $this->custom_import_data as $key => $value ) {
            $extra_fields[ $key ] = $key;
        }
        return $extra_fields;
    }

    public function save_custom_data( $event_id, $data, $event ) {
        foreach ( $this->custom_import_data as $key => $value ) {
            if ( isset( $data[ $key ] ) && $data[ $key ] != '' ) {
                update_post_meta( $event_id, $key, esc_html( $data[ $key ] ) );
            }
        }
    }
}

new TEC_CSV_Import_Custom_Metadata();

Add this to your child theme’s functions.php file or via the Code Snippets plugin.

The _tribe_events_status key in the example above maps to TEC’s built-in event status field, which supports three statuses out of the box (also defined by schema.org):

• Scheduled (default)
• Canceled
• Postponed

To define your own custom event statuses, see Adding a Custom Event Status.