National Tell a Joke Day
National Tell a Joke Day falls on 16 August every year, and in 2026 that is a Sunday. It is an unofficial observance with no founder on record, no sponsoring body and no first observance anyone can date. What it does have is a genuinely old subject: the oldest joke anyone has dug up is a Sumerian one-liner from around 1900 BC.
Key facts
- Date
- 16 August, fixed — a Sunday in 2026
- Founder
- None documented — no person or organisation claims it
- Status
- Unofficial observance; not a public holiday anywhere
- Observed
- No organising body; spread by calendar sites and social media
- Oldest recorded joke
- A Sumerian proverb dated to roughly 1900 BC
What is National Tell a Joke Day?
The day asks one thing of you: tell somebody a joke on 16 August. There is no ceremony, no charity attached and nothing to sign up for. It belongs to the large family of light, unofficial observances that circulate on calendar sites and social media without any body behind them, which is why the date is stable but everything else about it is vague.
That vagueness is worth stating plainly, because most write-ups of the day paper over it. Nobody has found the person who started it, the year it began, or any organisation that adopted it. Reference calendars that list it say the same thing by omission — they give the date and then move straight to jokes in general, because there is nothing else to give.
Jokes are much older than the day
The day has no history, but the joke does. In 2008 the television channel Dave commissioned a team led by Paul McDonald, a humour researcher at the University of Wolverhampton, to find the oldest recorded jokes. The winner was Sumerian, written down around 1900 BC in the Old Babylonian period: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”
McDonald’s team put the point more usefully than the date does: the set-up and punch line structure has barely changed in four thousand years, and jokes have always worked on taboos and a bit of rebellion. Some accounts push the proverb back further still, to around 2300 BC. Either way, the practice this day marks predates every institution that might have designated it.
What the laughter research actually shows
There is real science on laughter, and it is narrower than the slogans. The best-documented finding is neurochemical: in 2017 Sandra Manninen and colleagues scanned twelve men with PET after they had watched comedy with friends for half an hour, and found endogenous opioid release in the thalamus, caudate nucleus and anterior insula. A companion behavioural experiment found pain thresholds rose more after laughter-inducing comedy than after drama.
Notice the size of that study: twelve participants, all male. That is normal for brain imaging and it is also a reason to hold the conclusion loosely. The same caution applies to the immune claim that follows this day around. It rests largely on small 1980s work measuring a short rise in salivary antibody after a funny video — a laboratory measurement, not evidence that people who laugh get fewer colds.
What people get wrong about laughing
Myth: Laughter is the best medicine — a good laugh boosts your immune system and wards off colds.
Fact: The immune evidence traces to a 1985 study that measured a short-lived rise in salivary IgA after a humorous videotape. No trial has shown that laughing leaves anyone with fewer infections.
Myth: Laughing releases endocannabinoids that block pain signals.
Fact: The measured pathway is opioid, not cannabinoid. PET imaging in 2017 traced laughter's pleasurable and pain-dulling effect to endogenous opioid release in the brain.
Myth: Tell a Joke Day is an official holiday, observed worldwide since it began.
Fact: No government has recognised it and no organisation runs it. The calendars that list it name no founder, no sponsor and no first observance.
The world’s funniest joke, as measured
If the day needs a set piece, LaughLab is a better one than any health claim. Beginning in 2001, the psychologist Richard Wiseman at the University of Hertfordshire ran a website where anyone could submit a joke and rate other people’s; hundreds of thousands took part, and the results were announced in 2002. The highest-scoring joke, submitted by Gurpal Gosal of Manchester, was a grim little exchange between a hunter and an emergency operator.
Wiseman has since been careful about what that means. It was not the joke most people loved but, in his words, the joke most people did not hate — the one that survived being averaged across ages, countries and sexes. Two other results are more fun. The most frequently submitted joke of all was “What’s brown and sticky? A stick.” And a computer-generated pun about a cereal killer outscored roughly a third of the human entries.
The winner was not even original: it was later traced to a 1951 Goon Show sketch written by Spike Milligan, which is its own comment on how jokes travel.
National Tell a Joke Day Dates
This year National Tell a Joke Day is celebrated on Sunday, Aug 16, 2026
| Year | Date | Day |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Aug 16 | Sunday |
| 2027 | Aug 16 | Monday |
| 2028 | Aug 16 | Wednesday |
| 2029 | Aug 16 | Thursday |
| 2030 | Aug 16 | Friday |
| 2031 | Aug 16 | Saturday |
How to mark 16 August
Six things that beat resolving to tell more jokes.
Learn one joke properly
Pick a single joke, memorise the exact wording, and say it out loud three times before you use it. Most jokes die on delivery, not on the page, and the punch line has to land last.
Ask, do not just tell
Trade rather than perform: after your joke, ask the other person for theirs. Most lists of ways to mark this day are all output; the better half of a joke day is listening.
Write one down
Try writing a joke instead of borrowing one. Give yourself a set-up of about fifteen words and a punch line of five, then cut everything that is not doing work.
Read the oldest ones
Look up the Sumerian proverb collections that scholars have translated. Reading four-thousand-year-old material takes ten minutes and shows how little the shape of a joke has changed.
Watch something, together
Put on a comedy with other people in the room rather than alone. The 2017 laughter study measured people watching comedy with friends, not alone — the company is part of the effect it found.
Keep it kind
Aim the joke at yourself or at nobody. A joke that needs a target group to work will lose you half the room, and it is the one people remember for the wrong reason.
Common questions
When is National Tell a Joke Day?
It falls on 16 August every year, which is a Sunday in 2026. The date does not move, and there is no organising body that could move it.
Who started National Tell a Joke Day?
Nobody known. No founder, sponsoring organisation or first observance is on record, and the calendars that list the day do not claim one. Anyone who names a founder is guessing.
Is it a public holiday?
No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal status anywhere. Nothing closes, nobody gets the day off, and no government has ever formally recognised it as a holiday.
Is laughter really good for your health?
Some of it holds up. Laughter measurably raises pain thresholds and triggers opioid release in the brain. Claims that it strengthens immunity, burns meaningful calories or extends life are far weaker than the phrase “best medicine” suggests.
What is the world’s funniest joke?
By measurement rather than opinion, it is the LaughLab winner from 2002: a hunter telephones for help, is told to make sure his friend is dead, and a shot is heard. Richard Wiseman calls it the joke fewest people disliked.
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