*Updated on 18th March 2026 – initially published on 19th March 2025*
World Storytelling Day celebrates the joy of telling stories and listening to them. Reading is often solitary, but on this day, people share stories with others and get reacquainted with the art of oral storytelling. You may find local events celebrating the event, or you may organise your own family reunion and read to each other, especially to children. Why not recreate an evening like in the old days, when technology was not a thing and live storytelling was the only entertainment?
It is always on March 20 around the spring equinox. Is there a better way to get more social again after winter?
In 2026, the theme is Light in the Dark.
It is a beautiful theme you can take at face value with candles, old lamps and a fireplace. But it also introduces symbolic elements about what dark and light mean on other levels. Light in the dark is also hope, a new warmth and connection with others or a silver lining in dark and difficult moments. It is a transformative journey towards better things or a better understanding.
You can choose late-winter stories, spring stories, or mythology narratives. For example:
- Genesis in the Bible (“Let there be light”)
- Persephone in Greek mythology
- Prometheus in Greek mythology
- Andersen’s fairy tales: The Little Match Girl, The Snow Queen
- Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant
- Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden
- The Spring passages of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
- L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince
Or any other stories that you like and want to share which align with the theme.
In 2025, the theme was Deep Water. To help you choose among the classics, here are 10 stories related to this theme :
- The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
- Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- The Sea Fairies, L. Frank Baum
- Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
- The Maracot Deep, Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe
- Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
