Leisure marketing calendar 2025: key dates to drive engagement at your gym, leisure or aquatic centre

At Jonas Leisure, we understand the importance of keeping your facility bustling with activity throughout the year.
We’ve compiled key dates for 2025 that present perfect opportunities to engage your community, boost attendance, and promote health and wellness through targeted marketing campaigns and special promotions. Use Envibe’s Trigger messaging to automate your marketing efforts and create timely promo codes that encourage people to get active!

January

Start the year strong by capitalising on New Year’s fitness resolutions. This is a prime time to attract new members with special offers and wellness challenges – create ‘2025 Kickstarter’ promo codes for new member sign up fees. You could also consider holding special community events on Australia Day.

Key dates in January

  • 1 January – New Year’s Day
  • 20 January – Wellington Anniversary Day (New Zealand)
  • 27 January – Australia Day
  • 27 January – Auckland Anniversary Day (New Zealand)

February

Focus on heart health and partner workouts this month. Create special campaigns around Valentine’s Day that encourage couples to get active together like ‘Sweetheart Deals’ for couples joining together, and themed group fitness challenges.

Key dates in February

  • 3 February – Nelson Anniversary Day (New Zealand)
  • 6 February – Waitangi Day (New Zealand)
  • 14 February – Valentine’s Day
  • Heart Health Month

March

As autumn begins in the Southern Hemisphere, focus on helping members maintain their momentum by offering bespoke programmes and classes. You could promote women’s only classes and events for International Women’s Day, hold a laughter yoga class for International Day of Happiness and highlight inclusive fitness programmes for World Down Syndrome Day.

Key dates in March

  • 3 March – Labour Day (Western Australia)
  • 8 March – International Women’s Day
  • 10 March – Labour Day (Victoria and Tasmania, Australia)
  • 20 March – International Day of Happiness
  • 21 March – World Down Syndrome Day

April

Focus on family fitness during the school holidays and create special Easter-themed wellness challenges. Set up automated reminders for holiday programme registrations. World Health Day is a golden opportunity to have a free open day at your facility to offer health assessments, wellness checks and taster sessions for your range of fitness and wellness activities.

Key dates in April

  • 7 April – World Health Day
  • 12 April to 27 April – New Zealand school holidays
  • 18 April – Good Friday
  • 21 April – Easter Monday
  • 25 April – ANZAC Day (Australasia)

May

May is the perfect time to focus on workplace wellness and inclusive fitness. Launch corporate membership campaigns during Global Employee Health and Fitness Month, create special Mother’s Day sessions that bring families together, and showcase your commitment to inclusive fitness spaces that welcome everyone.

Key dates in May

  • Global Employee Health and Fitness Month
  • 5 May – Labour Day (Queensland)
  • 11 May – Mother’s Day (Australasia)
  • 17 May – International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia

June

Focus on winter wellness and supporting mental health for your members and your staff as the Southern Hemisphere enters the cooler months. There are plenty of opportunities to promote specific sports and activities with Global Running Day, International Tennis Day and International Day of Yoga to celebrate. Why not host a junior and senior tennis competition or promote a spin class with fun team challenges?

Key dates in June

  • 2 June – King’s Birthday (New Zealand)
  • 3 June – World Bicycle Day
  • 4 June – Global Running Day
  • 9 June – King’s Birthday (Australia, except Queensland and Western Australia)
  • 14 June – Global Wellness Day
  • 20 June – Matariki (New Zealand)
  • 20 June – International Tennis Day
  • 21 June – International Day of Yoga
  • 28 June to 13 July – New Zealand school holidays

July

Beat the winter blues with indoor fitness challenges, swimming programmes and school holiday programmes. Promote indoor pool activities and create ‘Winter Warrior’ challenges with achievement tracking.

Key date in July

  • 13 July – New Zealand school holidays finish

August

Focus on highlighting strength and conditioning classes as people start thinking about spring fitness goals, plus any tai chi, meditation or massage services you offer to support International Relaxation Day.

Key date in August

  • 15 August – International Relaxation Day

September

Highlight the importance of mental health by creating mental health awareness campaigns to promote the connection between physical and mental wellbeing. Target school children with holiday programmes and perhaps some special father-child activities.

Key dates in September

  • 7 September – Father’s Day (Australasia)
  • 11 September – R U OK? Day (Australasia)
  • 20 September to 5 October – New Zealand school holidays

October

As the weather starts to warm up in the Southern Hemisphere, focus on family fitness opportunities on public holidays, get spooky for Halloween with themed group fitness classes or hold ‘Pink Power’ work out challenges to raise money for Breast Cancer charities.

Key dates in October

  • All month – International Breast Cancer Awareness Month
  • 6 October – Labour Day (ACT, NSW and South Australia)
  • 27 October – Labour Day (New Zealand)
  • 31 October – Halloween

November

Help your members build some mental health momentum before the holiday season with targeted wellness campaigns or stage a fundraising campaign on Gumboot Friday to support the I Am Hope Foundation. World Diabetes Day is a great opportunity to promote lifestyle programmes and you could run some women’s self-defence classes for International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Key dates in November

  • Movember (Men’s health month)
  • 4 November – Melbourne Cup Day (Victoria, Australia)
  • 7 November – Gumboot Friday (Australasia)
  • 14 November – World Diabetes Day
  • 25 November – International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women

December

Get kids on holiday engaged with holiday programmes, create Christmas-themed challenges and promote ‘New Year, New You’ early bird specials for 2026.

Key dates in December

  • 1 December – Start of summer in Australasia
  • 20 December – last day for New Zealand Christmas school holidays to start
  • 25 December – Christmas Day
  • 26 December – Boxing Day
  • 31 December – New Year’s Eve

School holidays in 2025

Lastly, let’s not forget the school holidays, which can be a boom time for aquatic and leisure centres to attract kids into holiday programmes. Australian school holiday dates are state-specific, while New Zealand school holiday dates are more standardised.

Seven ways to make the most of your calendar

  • Plan campaigns six to eight weeks in advance
  • Use Envibe’s Trigger messaging to automate promotional communications
  • Create themed promo codes for special events and holidays
  • Track campaign success through Envibe’s reporting functionality
  • Adjust promotions based on member engagement data
  • Consider local events and weather patterns when planning outdoor activities
  • Create inclusive programming that caters to all ability levels

Envibe’s promotions feature lets you create promo codes to offer members special deals and discounts to entice them into bespoke programmes and sessions at your facility. Trigger messaging is an easy and powerful way to spread the good word about what you’ve created to celebrate a day or month relevant to health, fitness or wellbeing.

Want to become a pro at setting up your promotional campaigns in Envibe? Contact our helpful support team for assistance with creating promo codes, optimising your use of trigger messaging and tracking your campaigns to find out what’s working best and why.