The meme calendar is the set of memes that come back on the same date every year, whether anyone wants them to or not. Some are pop songs with a date in the lyrics (Friday, "It's Gonna Be May", the 21st night of September). Some are seasons (Spooky Month, Cuffing Season, the Winter Arc). Some are games (Whamageddon). Together they form a liturgical year for people who have been online too long, and this list walks through all 25 in date order, with where each came from and whether it is still going.
A note on status: annual memes are the hardest to kill, because a date arrives whether or not the joke is funny. Most of these are "undead" in our dictionary's terms: not in daily use, immune to overexposure, and back next year regardless.
January to March
1. New Year: "In the big 26"
In the Big 25 started at the end of 2024 as a TikTok phrase for goals and predictions ("in the big 25 I'm going to…"), and the format simply increments each year. It is a small, silly annual and has been dying since about February 2025, but the number will roll over every January regardless. Origin: TikTok, late 2024. Status: dying.
2. The Winter Arc
The Winter Arc is the idea, from gym and self-improvement TikTok around 2024, that the dark months from October to March are for locking in: training, discipline, no distractions. It is the anime "training arc" applied to seasonal depression. Posts start in late September and peak in January, when they merge with New Year's resolutions. Origin: TikTok, 2024. Status: alive.
3. Blue Monday and the January slump
The "most depressing day of the year" (the third Monday of January) was invented by a travel company press release in 2005 and has been debunked every year since, which has not stopped it. The meme is now the debunking itself: every January, someone explains that Blue Monday is fake, and that explanation is the annual post. Origin: press release, 2005. Status: undead.
4. Grammys snub discourse
Every February, the Grammys nominate and award the wrong things, and Grammys Snub Discourse runs for a week. The tradition dates back to at least 2010 (the year Taylor Swift beat Beyoncé for Album of the Year and Kanye's interruption became a template) and has produced a reliable annual crop of "robbed" memes. Origin: 2010, Twitter. Status: alive.
5. Valentine's Day and the end of cuffing season
Cuffing Season, the idea that people pair off in autumn to have someone for the cold months, has been on Urban Dictionary since 2011 and produces two annual peaks: the start (October) and the reckoning (Valentine's Day, when the temporary couples either commit or "uncuff"). The Valentine's memes about being single are older than the internet; the cuffing framing is what makes them annual. Origin: 2011. Status: alive.
6. Leap Day
February 29 arrives every four years and brings the same three jokes: people born on it being "only 7", the extra day being an unpaid work day, and, since 2024, the frog-adjacent trope of Leap Day being the one day when nothing counts (from the 30 Rock episode "Leap Day", 2012). The 30 Rock version, with Leap Day William, is the meme's true origin. Origin: 30 Rock, 2012. Status: undead (next due 2028).
7. Pi Day
March 14 (3/14) has been Pi Day since 1988 (a physicist at the San Francisco Exploratorium started it), and it became a meme when the internet noticed you could eat pie. The annual content is: pies with the symbol on them, "Pi Day, the only day maths is fun", and the 2015 "once in a century" version (3/14/15). Origin: 1988, viral on the web from the mid-2000s. Status: alive, mildly.
8. Anime Awards discourse
Crunchyroll's Anime Awards, held each spring, produce a week of Anime Awards Discourse about which series was robbed and whether the ceremony matters. The tradition has grown alongside the awards since 2017. Origin: 2017, Twitter and Reddit. Status: alive.
April to June
9. April Fools
The oldest date on this list and the one the internet has most thoroughly ruined. Google's April Fools stunts (2000 onward) trained a generation to expect corporate jokes, and by around 2016 the meme was "brands doing April Fools is over". Since the pandemic, several companies have skipped it entirely, and the annual meme is now the announcement that they are skipping it. Origin: ancient; internet version from 2000. Status: dying.
10. Coachella livestream discourse
Every April the Coachella YouTube livestream produces Coachella Livestream Discourse: who was good, who was bad, whose vocals were exposed, and the annual "I'm watching from my sofa and this is better" post. Since 2023, when a headliner was replaced at short notice, the festival has been a reliable source of one big meme a year. Origin: 2023 in its current form. Status: alive.
11. 4/20
April 20 as a cannabis holiday dates from a group of California high-school students in 1971, spread through Grateful Dead circles and reached the internet in the late 1990s. The meme layer is the "nice" reply to any appearance of the number 420 (and 69), which has been automatic online since around 2010. Origin: 1971; internet meme since the 2000s. Status: undead.
12. "It's Gonna Be May"
The most durable of the song-date memes. On April 30 every year, the internet posts Justin Timberlake's face from the 2000 NSYNC video for "It's Gonna Be Me", captioned with the way he pronounces the last word. The meme dates from a Tumblr post around 2012 and has been officially acknowledged by Timberlake, the Obama White House and NSYNC themselves. Origin: Tumblr, 2012. Status: undead.
13. May the 4th
Star Wars Day ("May the Fourth be with you") was first recorded in 1979 as a newspaper advert congratulating Margaret Thatcher, was adopted by fans in the 2000s and became an official Disney marketing date after 2012. The meme is the pun, and the counter-meme is "Revenge of the Fifth" on May 5. Origin: 1979 pun, fan holiday from around 2011. Status: alive.
14. Cinco de Mayo and Mambo No. 5
May 5 brings a genuine holiday and a spurious meme: some people insist on posting Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" (1999) because it has a five in it. This is not really a thing, which is why it is on this list with a question mark, but it has been posted often enough since around 2015 that someone will do it this year. Origin: unclear, mid-2010s. Status: dying, arguably never alive.
15. Eurovision
The Eurovision Song Contest, held each May, produces a fixed set of annual memes: the UK getting "nul points", the country that sends something insane, the voting-map explainer, and the American who discovers it exists. Eurovision 2024 added a permanent one in the Finnish entry's naked-from-the-waist-down man. Origin: the contest since 1956; internet memes since the 2000s. Status: alive.
16. Hot Girl Summer
Megan Thee Stallion's phrase from 2019 became the template for every "X summer" since (Feral Girl Summer, Brat Summer, Stitch Summer). Hot Girl Summer itself is now an annual declaration on the first warm day, and the "what kind of summer will it be" discourse runs each June. Origin: 2019, Twitter and Instagram. Status: dying as a phrase, alive as a format.
July to September
17. Shark Week and Discovery's annual panic
Discovery's Shark Week (since 1988, usually July) has been an internet event since the 2010s, mostly because of the fake documentaries (the "Megalodon" special of 2013) and the annual argument about them. The meme is the reminder that the shark content is not real. Origin: 1988; meme since 2013. Status: dying.
18. Back to school
August's annual meme is the back-to-school haul, the "first day" photo and, since Six-Seven, the annual list of things teachers are banning this year. The format is as old as social media; the specifics change annually. Origin: Facebook, late 2000s. Status: alive.
19. The 21st night of September
Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" (1978) opens with "Do you remember the 21st night of September?", and every September 21 the internet remembers. The meme took off around 2015, was acknowledged by the band, and has produced an annual mixture of the song, the question and the Demi Adejuyigbe dance videos (2016 to 2021), which are the meme's best chapter. Origin: Twitter, around 2015. Status: undead.
20. "Wake Me Up When September Ends"
Green Day's 2004 song produces the paired meme: on September 1, "please do not wake me up until September ends"; on October 1, someone waking up Billie Joe Armstrong. This has been running since around 2012. Origin: Twitter and Facebook, around 2012. Status: undead.
October to December
21. Spooky Month
October 1 is the start of Spooky Month, announced by the Spooky Month Countdown (the dancing skeleton, "it's spooky month", and the Sr Pelo animation from 2017 that gave the phrase its current form) and the wider Skeleton Meme Season, in which skeletons, "Spooky Scary Skeletons" (1996, meme since around 2013) and the skeleton war (Tumblr, 2014) return. It is the internet's favourite season and the only one with an official song. Origin: Tumblr around 2013; Sr Pelo 2017. Status: alive.
22. Mariah Carey defrosting
On November 1, the day after Halloween, Mariah Carey emerges from the ice to begin the Christmas season, because "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (1994) is about to be played everywhere. Mariah Carey Defrosting as a meme dates from around 2019 and Carey has posted her own version every year since, which makes it one of the few annual memes run by its subject. Origin: 2019, Twitter and Instagram. Status: alive.
23. Whamageddon
The game: from December 1 to December 24, avoid hearing Wham!'s "Last Christmas" (1984). If you hear it, you are out, and you post "Whamageddon" or "I've been Whammed". It started on a Danish forum around 2010, got its name and rules in 2016, and is now an annual sport with a website and a scoreboard. Covers do not count. Origin: Denmark, around 2010. Status: alive.
24. Spotify Wrapped and Elf on the Shelf
Two early-December annuals. Spotify Wrapped Discourse (Wrapped launched in 2016, meme since about 2019) runs for a week of screenshots, jokes about listening habits and complaints about the year's format. Elf on the Shelf Discourse (the toy from 2005, meme since around 2012) is the annual argument about whether the elf is surveillance training for children, plus the rhyming "you've heard of Elf on the Shelf, now get ready for" format from 2017. Origin: 2016 and 2005 respectively. Status: both alive.
25. Game of the Year and the Christmas film argument
December closes with GOTY Discourse (The Game Awards, since 2014, and the annual fight about what was robbed) and the Die Hard argument (is it a Christmas film; the debate has been an annual fixture since around 2007). Both are memes about arguments rather than about anything else, which is the purest form of annual content. Origin: 2014 and around 2007. Status: alive.
The weekly calendar
Three memes come back not every year but every week, and they deserve a mention. Friday (Rebecca Black, 2011) is posted every Friday and has been since the song came out; Black's own embrace of it made it undead. It's Wednesday My Dudes (the frog, from a 2014 Vine that reached its current form in 2016) is the Wednesday post. TBT (Throwback Thursday, Instagram from around 2011) is dying but still going. And on Reddit, everyone has a Cake Day, the anniversary of their account, which is the one annual meme that is personal to the poster.
Why the calendar matters
Annual memes are the closest thing the internet has to tradition. They survive because a date is a better trigger than a trend: nobody has to remember "It's Gonna Be May", the 30th of April remembers it for them. They also tell you how old a meme really is. If it has come back three years running, it will come back thirty, and no brand, parent or explainer can kill it, because it does not depend on being cool. It depends on the earth going round the sun, which so far has proved reliable.
FAQ
What memes come back every year?
The reliable ones are "It's Gonna Be May" (April 30), the 21st night of September, Spooky Month (October 1), Mariah Carey Defrosting (November 1), Whamageddon (December 1 to 24), Pi Day (March 14), 4/20, and the weekly Friday and It's Wednesday My Dudes posts.
What is Whamageddon?
An annual game, started on a Danish forum around 2010 and formalised in 2016, in which you try to get from December 1 to December 24 without hearing the original Wham! recording of "Last Christmas". Hearing it knocks you out.
Where does "It's Gonna Be May" come from?
From the way Justin Timberlake sings "me" in NSYNC's 2000 song "It's Gonna Be Me". The caption meme started on Tumblr around 2012 and is posted every April 30.
Why is October "spooky month"?
The phrase comes from a 2017 animation by Sr Pelo, built on an older Tumblr tradition of skeleton memes and "Spooky Scary Skeletons" edits that goes back to around 2013. October 1 is the start; the Spooky Month Countdown runs all September.
When does Mariah Carey defrost?
November 1, the day after Halloween, when Christmas music season begins. The Mariah Carey Defrosting meme dates from around 2019 and Carey posts her own version each year.
