{"id":1949232,"date":"2021-02-22T16:20:03","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T21:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/?post_type=tribe-knowledgebase&#038;p=1949232"},"modified":"2026-04-21T13:59:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:59:22","slug":"setting-dates-and-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/setting-dates-and-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting Event Dates and Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Events Calendar uses WordPress&#8217;s General Settings to determine which day the week starts on, the default timezone, and how dates and times are formatted. You can override any of these at the plugin level if you want your calendar to display differently from the rest of your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Setting Dates and Times\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1FeGqbACnuo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-wordpress-general-settings\">WordPress General Settings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>These settings live at <strong>Settings \u2192 General<\/strong> in the WordPress dashboard and apply site-wide, including to your calendar views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image.png\" alt=\"WordPress General Settings\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Timezone<\/strong> \u2014 Select your timezone.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Date format<\/strong> \u2014 Select or customize your <a href=\"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/k\/date-format-settings\/\">date format<\/a>. See the <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/article\/formatting-date-and-time\/\">WordPress guide to formatting date and time<\/a> for the full syntax reference.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Time format<\/strong> \u2014 Choose from the built-in options, or select <strong>Custom<\/strong> and enter your own format string. See the <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/article\/formatting-date-and-time\/\">WordPress Codex<\/a> for available format characters.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Week Starts On<\/strong> \u2014 Select the first day of the week. The WordPress default is Monday.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2014\/10\/kb-timeformat-settings.png\" alt=\"The Time Format options in WordPress General Settings\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2019\/10\/week-start-on.png\" alt=\"The Week Starts On dropdown in WordPress General Settings\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Save your changes, and the selections apply automatically to your calendar views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-events-calendar-date-and-time-formats\">The Events Calendar Date and Time Formats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Events Calendar lets you override WordPress&#8217;s settings and configure date and time formats directly in the plugin \u2014 so you can have one format site-wide and a different format on your calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Navigate to <strong>Events \u2192 Settings \u2192 Display \u2192 Date &amp; Time<\/strong> to configure these settings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Date with year<\/strong> \u2014 Format for a date that includes the year (e.g., <em>January 29, 2021<\/em>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Date without year<\/strong> \u2014 Format for a date without the year (e.g., <em>January 29<\/em>). Commonly used for events in the current year.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Month and year format<\/strong> \u2014 Format for month-and-year displays (e.g., <em>January 2021<\/em>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Week day format<\/strong> \u2014 Format for the day of the week and date number in Events Calendar Pro&#8217;s Week View.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Compact date format<\/strong> \u2014 Format for dates in compact spaces (e.g., <em>1\/21\/2021<\/em>). Used in datepickers, including the one in the event editor. Also affects your mobile date picker.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Date-time separator<\/strong> \u2014 Specifies how to separate the date and time when shown together (e.g., <em>Jan. 21 @ 8:00 p.m.<\/em>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Time range separator<\/strong> \u2014 Specifies how to separate start and end times (e.g., <em>Jan. 21 @ 8:00 p.m. \u2013 9:00 p.m.<\/em>).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image-3-868x1024.png\" alt=\"The Date &amp; Time settings tab in The Events Calendar\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-events-calendar-s-end-of-day-cutoff-setting\">The Events Calendar&#8217;s &#8220;End of Day Cutoff&#8221; Setting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you regularly have events that are scheduled to end after midnight? If so, you&#8217;ve probably noticed that these events will span the course of two different days on the month view of your calendar. This probably isn&#8217;t the way you would like for that event to display, is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately, there is a simple way to fix this issue! Go to <strong>Events &gt; Settings &gt;  Display &gt; Date &amp; Time<\/strong> and you&#8217;ll see an option to control the &#8220;End of day cutoff.&#8221;&nbsp;By moving this setting past midnight to the time when your nightly events end, you can prevent this awkward behavior of the event spanning multiple days on your calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"556\" height=\"130\" src=\"https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2020\/01\/cutoff.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1964502\" style=\"width:869px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2020\/01\/cutoff.png 556w, https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2020\/01\/cutoff-300x70.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 556px) 100vw, 556px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, say you have a concert that begins at 9:00 pm on a Friday night and ends at 2:00 am the following Saturday morning. By default, when you add this event to your calendar, you will set the start date for that Friday&nbsp;and the end date will be for Saturday.&nbsp;Technically, this event spans the course of two days and will display as such on your calendar. By changing the &#8220;End of day cutoff&#8221; setting to &#8220;2:00 am&#8221; any event that ends at, or before, 2:00 am won&#8217;t span the course of the two days and will display only for Friday night on your calendar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Events Calendar uses WordPress&#8217;s General Settings to determine which day the week starts on, the default timezone, and how dates and times are formatted. You can override any of these at the plugin level if you want your calendar to display differently from the rest of your site. WordPress General Settings These settings live&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1955565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_swpsp_post_exclude":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"stellar-product-taxonomy":[161],"class_list":["post-1949232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-getting-started","stellar-product-taxonomy-the-events-calendar"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":41,"label":"Getting Started"}],"stellar-product-taxonomy":[{"value":161,"label":"The Events Calendar"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/images.theeventscalendar.com\/kb\/uploads\/2023\/02\/social-share-1024x538.png",1024,538,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Jaime Marchwinski","author_link":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/author\/jaimetri-be\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":41,"name":"Getting Started","slug":"getting-started","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":41,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":37,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":41,"category_count":37,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Getting Started","category_nicename":"getting-started","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1949232"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1969739,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949232\/revisions\/1969739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1955565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1949232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1949232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1949232"},{"taxonomy":"stellar-product-taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theeventscalendar.com\/knowledgebase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stellar-product-taxonomy?post=1949232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}