Support the 2027 global ACT UP at 40 calendar

Aim

To raise £10,000 to support the international calendar tour and demonstration inspiring a new generation of radical healthcare activists.

Forty years since we began, our 'ACT UP at 40: Celebrating Resistance and Demanding Healthcare for All — Calendar 2027' Calendar celebrates the resistance, creativity and collective power of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) chapters around the world, and carries that fight forward. 

Each month features a classic photograph from the international ACT UP movement, alongside over 250 dates charting its protests, actions, people and turning points. We have the most beautiful, unseen footage from ACT UP chapters from Pittsburgh to Buenos Aires to Berlin and beyond. All calendar profits go to our ‘Fund Healthcare Not Warfare’ campaign leading up to an international day of action on our anniversary next year. 

Purchasing options - please state your name and contact clearly when you purchase via Etsy here 

• 15.00 RRP (Recommended Retail Price) 
• £20 to get a signed copy by the ACT UP editing team. 
• £50 means you become an 'ACT UP Patron' that will help us organise launches across the world with activists, photographers and filmmakers who documented and participated in the early years of ACT UP by asking 'What can ACT UP teach us today?' to inspire a new generation to continue the fight for healthcare for all. 

For bookshops, museums, cultural institutions and all who want to stock the calendar -please email [email protected]. Wholesale price is £10 with a minimum order of 10 calendars.

Press requests - For interviews with the calendars photographers, activists documented and the compilation team - please email [email protected]. Full press pack is available on request. 

“We have so much to learn from ACT UP about big tent politics and coalition work. I hope these daily reminders can inspire new innovations and ways to build the relationships that are at the center of progressive change.” Sarah Schulman, author of ‘The Gentrification of the Mind’ and ‘Let the Records Show: A Political History of ACT UP, 1987-1993’  ‘Lessons from Campaigning for AIDS Activism (commonslibrary.org)

Background to the calendar. 

“Plague! We are in the middle of a fucking plague … what are we gonna do about it?” Larry Kramer - ACT UP established, 1987. 

In 2025, ACT UP London released the 'ACT UP Pin Ups' calendar (video link above). We soon released we were not alone. Ours is a global history of people who refused to die quietly. 

For 40 years, ACT UP chapters around the world have fought for the right to live — and in many cases, won. ACT UP has saved thousands of lives by fighting for access to healthcare using direct action and collective power against the odds: mass die-ins, occupying pharmaceutical headquarters, political funerals to remember the dead and fight for the living, throwing ashes over the White House gates in an act of grief and rage - and so much more. 

Today, twenty-three million people’s lives are at risk due to the Great Unfunding’ of HIV and AIDS healthcare. We need ACT UP’s strategic efficacy now more than ever as UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima warned “We don’t have time to lose. This is a moment of radical change.”

Testimonials 

“Working with surviving members of the group on this calendar project not only reignited their pride over what they did 30+ years ago, but also offers the chance to share some of that flame with other ACT UP chapters and followers around the world.” Mark Andrew, ACT UP Montreal, curator of Active Grieving: The Aesthetic Activism of ACT UP Montréal at the MEM museum in Montréal

“We are so grateful for the opportunity to be seen and share our story. The Caucus brought HIV/AIDS education and activism directly into New York’s Latino communities. Members translated and distributed life-saving information, conducted grassroots outreach, and brought HIV/AIDS visibility to community spaces and public events, including the Puerto Rican Day Parade. ” Julian de Mayo, as part of the surviving members of the ACT UP Latina/o Caucus 

"This work is really wonderful and important; I'm proud to have played a tiny part in it. Thank you! Thank you!" Valeria Calvino, White Rabbit Collective, protege of ACT UP Brussels

"For us, this calendar project has been an opportunity to connect with other ACT UP chapters despite the physical distances and the different contexts in which we organise. It also encouraged us to bring together the milestones of our own brief local history, allowing all our members to learn more about it and strengthening our sense of pride and belonging. The project has helped us understand our own existence as part of an international movement that has been fighting for four decades, while raising new questions about our history that we hope to continue researching and documenting." ACT UP Argentina

About ‘AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power’

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the HIV pandemic, along with the broader inequalities and injustices that perpetuate it. Remembering that HIV & AIDS is foremost a political crisis, as well as a medical emergency, we will use every means possible to call out and contain this pandemic. We will never be silent.

In a time of rising inequality, we challenge anyone who would hinder or cut back on life-saving services around safer sex, education, clean needles and all other HIV prevention measures. And in a time of continuing stigma, silence, and isolation, we combat discrimination against and promote the visibility and leadership of those living with HIV and AIDS.

We are STILL not silent.

ACT UP! FIGHT BACK! FIGHT AIDS! Until there is healthcare for all.

Read more here ‘Giant condoms and buckets of fake blood: the true story of Aids activists Act Up’ (theguardian.com) and What ACT UP’s successes can teach today’s protest movements (theguardian.com).

• Contributing editors - Jack Wingate and Holly Buckle 
• Designer - Matt Bonner / Revolt Design 
• Editor  -  dan glass 

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 30th November 2026 at 1:52pm