Spring Pub Playbook 2027: Every Date from Dry January to Easter

Spring is a run of reasons to visit. Dry January, Burns Night, two Six Nations championships, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, St Patrick's Day and Easter, with drinks days and saints' days in between. Between the first week of January and the middle of May, there is a reason for people to come out almost every week, and most pubs end up promoting each one the week before it happens.

This playbook puts the whole season in one place: every date, the clashes that matter in 2027, how far ahead to start selling, and a full guide for each moment. You do not need to run all of it. Pick the moments that fit your pub, plan them once, and sell them early.

The rhythm that works: Plan it. Post it. Brief it. Book it. Measure it.

Six things about spring 2027 to plan around

The calendar has real overlaps this year, and the pubs that spot them early win them.

1. Valentine's Day is a Sunday, and England play France that afternoon at 3.10pm. Plan a Valentine's weekend, not a night, and decide what Sunday afternoon is.
2. Mother's Day, Sunday 7 March, is the morning after Wales v England. The team that closes late after the rugby opens for the biggest lunch of the spring.
3. St Patrick's Day is a Wednesday, four days after Super Saturday, which ends with Ireland v France. The crowd you have in on 13 March is the crowd you sell it to.
4. 27 and 28 February is the only weekend in the men's championship with no rugby. Fill it with something of your own.
5. International Whisk(e)y Day, 27 March, is Easter Saturday. A ready-made reason for a whisky flight on a bank holiday weekend.
6. The clocks go forward at 1am on Easter Sunday. If you trade past 1am on the Saturday, that night is an hour shorter, and Sunday lunch starts an hour earlier on everyone's body clock.

January: Dry January and Burns Night

Dry January is not a month off for your bar. It is a month for your alcohol-free range, and the pubs with a proper one keep the drivers, the moderators and the people taking a break coming in. Our guide to low and no drinks covers what to stock and how to sell it.

Burns Night, Monday 25 January, is the first booked night of the year: one sitting, one price, a haggis supper pre-ordered, and a running order that does the entertaining for you. Start selling it in December, while your Christmas guests are in. Our Burns Night guide has the menu, the running order and the promotion plan.

February: the Six Nations and Valentine's Day

The men's Six Nations opens with Ireland v England on Friday 5 February at 8.10pm and runs to Super Saturday on 13 March. Every match is free to air, on ITV or the BBC. Put the fixtures on the wall in January, take bookings for the big matches and run a short match-day menu. Our Six Nations 2027 guide has every fixture with UK kick-off times.

Valentine's Day, Sunday 14 February, is a weekend, not a night: expect Friday and Saturday to carry much of the trade, and Saturday is Galentine's Day. Run one set menu across the three nights in two sittings, take deposits, and give everyone else a bar night of their own. Our Valentine's Day guide covers the menus, the sittings and the anti-Valentine's ideas.

Pancake Day is Tuesday 9 February, and National Margarita Day is Monday 22 February, two small reasons to put something new on the board on quiet nights. Our guide to national drinks days covers the drinks dates.

March: Mother's Day, St Patrick's Day and Easter

March is the busiest month of the spring, with three of its biggest days in four weeks.

St David's Day is Monday 1 March: a Welsh special on the board, and a reason for Welsh pubs to celebrate.

Mother's Day, Sunday 7 March, is one of the biggest food Sundays of the year. Fixed sittings, a deposit and a main-course pre-order with every booking, and a set menu with the roast at its centre. Open bookings in early February. Our Mother's Day guide covers the menu, the sittings, afternoon tea and buffet alternatives, and the campaign week by week.

St Patrick's Day, Wednesday 17 March, is a midweek night with a reason built in, and a bank holiday in Northern Ireland. Pick one headline, such as live Irish music, a quiz or an Irish night, and keep every drinks offer within your licence. Our St Patrick's Day guide has the formats, the food and the staffing plan.

The Easter weekend, Friday 26 to Monday 29 March, is four days of trade. Good Friday is a bank holiday in all four nations; Easter Monday is a bank holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not in Scotland. Plan each day for itself: fish on Good Friday, the whisky flight on Saturday, a booked lunch on Easter Sunday and a family day with an egg hunt on the Monday. Our Easter guide covers the menus, the events and the promotion.

April and May: the women's Six Nations and St George's Day

The women's Six Nations is played on five Saturdays: 10, 17 and 24 April, then 8 and 15 May, with three matches back to back every afternoon and every one of them on the BBC. It is the easiest rugby of the year to build a whole afternoon around, and the fixtures are in our Six Nations 2027 guide.

St George's Day is Friday 23 April: an English menu and a Friday night with a reason, and with the clocks forward, the first evenings light enough for the garden.

Lead times: when to start selling each date

The commonest mistake in spring is starting too late. These are the weeks to start promoting each date, so the bookings arrive before guests commit elsewhere.

Each guide has its own week-by-week plan. The pattern is the same for all of them: announce, remind, last call, then thank people and point them at the next date.

Plan it all in an afternoon

You can plan the whole season in one sitting. Our guide to planning your spring with AI shows how to do it with a free AI assistant in about two hours: you choose the moments and check the facts, and the assistant drafts a week-by-week calendar, three posts for each date and the wording for every poster. It has copy-and-paste prompts at three levels, from never having opened one of these tools to using one every day.

Keep it responsible

• Check every drinks offer against your licence. In Scotland, drinks promotions such as free or cheaper drinks when someone buys a drink, unlimited drinks for a fixed charge and alcohol as a prize are banned, and a changed price must stay the same for at least 72 hours, which rules out happy hours (Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, Schedule 3). In England and Wales, the mandatory licence conditions ban irresponsible promotions such as drinking games.
• Know your hours. A Temporary Event Notice in England and Wales must reach your council at least 10 clear working days before the event (GOV.UK). In Scotland, ask your licensing board.
• Take allergens from the source. Set menus are the easiest time to get allergen information right: take it from your recipes and your suppliers' specifications, and collect guests' needs when they book. Giving accurate allergen information is a legal requirement (GOV.UK).
• Look after the drivers. Every spring date brings drivers and people who are not drinking. A proper alcohol-free choice keeps them ordering.

Your first move

Do not try to run the whole spring. Pick the three or four moments that fit your pub and your guests, put them in the diary with their start-selling dates, and open bookings for the first one before Christmas. Brief the team so everyone can sell the next date, and use every booking to sell the one after it.

For a month-by-month framework you can reuse every year, use our seasonal pub events calendar. For the wider list of formats beyond spring, see pub event ideas.

When you are ready for more

Everything in this playbook works on its own, and you can run all of it yourself.

When you are ready for change, and want the season to run itself, with bookings that take deposits and send their own reminders, one place for your events and messages, and figures that show what each date earned, that is what Orange Jelly builds. At The Anchor, our own venue, we grew table bookings by 403%.

If that is what you want for your pub, call me on 07990 587315 or email peter@orangejelly.co.uk.

Sources

• Men's Six Nations 2027 fixtures (Six Nations Rugby)
• Women's Six Nations 2027 fixtures (Six Nations Rugby)
• Six Nations Rugby confirms new free-to-air TV deal until 2029 (RFU, 14 March 2025)
• UK bank holidays (GOV.UK)
• When do the clocks change? (GOV.UK)
• Temporary Events Notice (GOV.UK)
• Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, Schedule 3 (legislation.gov.uk)
• The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) (Amendment) Order 2014 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Running a food business: allergies (GOV.UK)

Sources checked on 19 October 2026.