United Nations Day

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Photo:Left to right: ©WHO/Daniel Hodgson, ©UN Photo/Marco Dormino, ©UNICEF/Aliaga Ticona, ©WFP/Arete/Fredrik Lerneryd, ©UN Photo/Martine Perret.

The United Nations at 80: Building our future together

2025 marks the UN's 80th anniversary.

The United Nations is the most universal international organization, making it truly global in reach. By promoting peace, human rights and social progress, including access to healthcare and education, the United Nations has improved the lives of people around the world, creating better living standards for all.

Eighty years after its founding, the United Nations faces new challenges. The Organization is working on ways to adapt and strengthen itself. With the Agenda 2030, the Pact for the Future, and the UN80 initiative, the UN is looking to renew the foundations of international cooperation, and to ensure that it can deliver for people everywhere.

A symbol of hope for global unity

United Nations Day, on 24 October, marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter. With the ratification of this founding document by the majority of its signatories, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United Nations officially came into being.

There is no other global organization with the legitimacy, convening power and normative impact of the United Nations. No other global organization gives hope to so many people for a better world and can deliver the future we want. Today, the urgency for all countries to come together, to fulfil the promise of the nations united, has rarely been greater.

UN Day, celebrated every year, offers the opportunity to amplify our common agenda and reaffirm the purposes and principles of the UN Charter that have guided us for the past 80 years.

Related links

• The UN at 80
• Learn more about the United Nations
• History of the United Nations
• Discover the UN system
• Essential UN
• Global Issues
• United Nations Anniversaries
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Hymn to the United Nations

Get inspired by this revived W.H. Auden’s Hymn to the United Nations. "Let music for peace Be the paradigm, For peace means to change At the right time, As the World-Clock, Goes Tick and Tock. So may the story Of our human city Presently move Like music, when Begotten notes New notes beget, Making the flowing Of time a growing".

How it all started

In 1945, representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conference on International Organization to draw up the United Nations Charter. The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by a majority of signatories. Watch history in the making with this footage from the UN archives !

What is the United Nations?

Anna Wilson explains the fundamentals of the Organization and breaks down the basics: How it started? What it does? And why does it still matter today? Learn all this in the following UN explainer video.