What is National Self-Care Week?
- Self-Care Week is a UK wide annual awareness week that focuses on embedding support for self-care across communities, families and generations.
- The Self-Care Week theme is “Mind & Body”
- For 2026, our messaging will follow our self‑care continuum while also highlighting healthy eating as one of ISF’s 7 Pillars of Self‑Care.
- The Self-Care Forum has been organising Self-Care Week since 2011
National Self-Care Week will be from 16 – 22 November2026
Monday 16 November at mid-day – LinkedIn Chat
Each year we launch Self-Care Week with a social media “chat”. Join us on LinkedIn from 12-1pm on 16 November. Follow along and comment on questions being posted. If you can’t join us in real time, you can still add your comments to our posts during the week.
Wednesday 18 November at mid-day – Podcast
Hosted by our friends at Learn With Nurses, our executive team (Helen Donovan, Dr Peter Smith, Trevor Gore) will be in session discussing all things self-care as part of our Self-Care Week activities. Join the session live if you can, or catch up via the recording afterwards.
Special Self-Care Week Newsletter
Our Self-Care Week newsletter has lots of last minute ideas about how to get involved. Access it by clicking on the link below.
Self-Care Week Assets for Social Media
Self-Care Week assets are available for use on social media to help get involved and share messages with your followers.
Who gets involved?
- Each year international, national, regional, local and community organisations passionate about empowering people to better look after their physical health and mental wellbeing participate in Self-Care Week
- Whilst many traditional health organisations use the Week to communicate health messages to service-users, a growing and diverse community of organisations and groups also get involved to help improve the health and wellbeing of their audiences
- In 2025, 100s of organisations and individuals used the awareness week to empower people, reaching millions.
What messages can I promote during Self-Care Week?
Self-Care Week allows for a broad range of messaging such as:
- taking vitamin D supplements, particularly important for those shielding and unable to go outside
- good nutrition and regular exercise to support general wellbeing and help maximise people’s immunity
- adopting positive lifestyle choices
- increasing health literacy levels in the community and in schools
- supporting mental wellness
- managing common ailments and long term health conditions
- signposting to NHS services such as pharmacy
- the benefits of vaccinations and screening.
The Self-Care Forum’s self-care continuum highlights that while professional care is essential at times, most health is self‑managed, and self‑care is supported by the NHS throughout rather than replaced by it.
Click here to go to the Self-Care Continuum page >
Self-Care Week Resources
We have produced resources, such as the Self-Care Week icon, posters, website text and helpful tips on planning and ideas. visit the resources page for more, details below.
What are people saying about National Self-Care Week?
Corporate Sponsorship Opportunities
Corporate packages are available to sponsors wishing to strengthen their self-care campaigns by collaborating with the Self-Care Forum. National Self-Care Week is a perfect time to promote sponsors’ particular self-care messages. To discuss a possible collaboration please contact Libby Whittaker.
Self-Care Week Reviews
We review each Self-Care Week to fully understand how organisations are getting involved and to learn how to improve the awareness week for the next year. You can read the reviews since 2011.
