New stake calendars

I'm a stake calendar administrator, and I recently noticed two new calendars in our system: "[Stake] Activities" and "[Stake] Meetings" (where [Stake] is the name of our stake). These calendars appear at the top of the list on the Manage Calendars screen and are separated from the other calendars by a divider line, and they don't have a "Remove" option like our other calendars. So they appear to be some sort of automatic/system calendars.

Screenshot

Does anyone know anything about these calendars? We already have other calendars for stake events and meetings, so these are unnecessary and I'd like to hide or remove them.

Those calendars appear to have been added by programming for the stake as well as for wards/branches as default calendars. They can be edited to change the name and who is an editor. They are also public calendars (visible to members in the stake/ward/branch). I have found nothing about this unit calendar change in the Official Communication Library, yet.

I'm seeing the same thing. This is the first I've heard of this and it's not listed in the Calendar 4.0 release notes. (And I've not heard of a 5.0)

I know I had a differing opinion on stake calendars with the prior product manager for the Calendar. He felt that all stake events should be on a single calendar. I felt that if the church wanted members to sync calendars to their personal devices, they need to be able to select calendars that matter to them. They're not going to sync calendars if they have too much "noise".

I would look at all the callings that have edit rights to the new calendar. They've put in a whole long list of callings. Keep in mind, it doesn't just allow them to place events on the calendar, but to edit any event on the calendar. For example the way they're setup now, the Stake Primary Secretary could move or delete stake conference.

Since the calendars can't be deleted, I'd move all the events from an existing similar calendar, edit the name, and adjust the editors to match. Another strategy would be to remove all the editors and see if these new calendars last. Perhaps rename them to "Not used".

Splitting meetings and events is a good idea, but I would have liked to have gotten some warning given we are already starting to fill out our 2027 stake calendar with stake events.

Personally I don't plan on using the new calendars until we get official instructions.

caillines wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2026 9:52 pm Splitting meetings and events is a good idea, but I would have liked to have gotten some warning given we are already starting to fill out our 2027 stake calendar with stake events.

Personally I don't plan on using the new calendars until we get official instructions.

Wait, has there ever been official instructions about the online or mobile tools? If there has it is few and far between.

I think these came out in conjunction with the release of the 2027 Planning and Calendaring guide (in the official comms library) - probably the single greatest thing the church has done administratively for members in decades, honestly. The idea that wards and stakes are using their calendars well is a stretch anyway. If you're on this board commenting, you probably can do whatever you want knowing your calendars are nice, but for the rest, the ones that have only just barely thought that planning for the upcoming year is a good idea, they will benefit. don't underestimate the idea of 'winging it' among our leadership tier out there, In my 35 years of experience working with them rarely have many thought more than a few months ahead.

johnshaw wrote: Wed Nov 04, 2026 7:50 am In my 35 years of experience working with them rarely have many thought more than a few months ahead.

It'd definitely be nice if organisations used the calendar system (at all).

My biggest concern is that as these two new calendars were simply just added, I don't know if they are and will always be just general calendars to help make things easier, or whether they have other plans for them.
What I don't want for instance, is to them to push through a change that makes items on the "activities" calendar public automatically (no choice) or by default (opt out).

I used the help feature on the calendar website to ask about these calendars. This is what I was told:

The Activities and Meetings calendars were added to every stake and ward on purpose. They’re there so Church headquarters may be able to add events to unit calendars in the future. In most units, the existing Activities calendar was given the new type, so no new one was added. In your stake, a new one was added instead. Meetings was added because it was never a default calendar. You can add your own events to the Activities and Meetings calendars, just like any other calendar.

Out of curiosity, I asked what types/examples of events they might add, but they didn't have any details.

The Activities and Meetings calendars were added to every stake and ward on purpose. They’re there so Church headquarters may be able to add events to unit calendars in the future.

Then why did they give such broad edit rights? As it stands now, it appears that any stake auxury can delete or move whatever CHQ adds.

We're in the process of entering our stake calendar for next year. These 2 new calendars appeared with no description or indicated purpose. They are at the top of our list, since our stake name begins with "C", so I renamed them with an "X" prefix to sort at the bottom of the list. Hopefully, that will avoid someone unintentionally adding something to them. It would have been nice to get more information. Without that, we'll move forward as in the past and use our existing calendars.

so I renamed them with an "X" prefix to sort at the bottom of the list. Hopefully, that will avoid someone unintentionally adding something to them.

Yes, I did something similar too. I renamed them to make it clear they're not in use, and removed all editor permissions so no one can create events on them.

Weird that no notice was sent out and no one from CHQ has responded to this thread yet.

At our stake level two new ones were added; we had a single combined one. On the ward level we already had an activities one with the same name and they didn't touch that. They created a meetings one though, with every leader in the ward as editor.