Remembrance Day 2026

Next date: Wednesday, 11 November 2026 | 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day will be commemorated in the West Torrens Memorial Gardens on Wednesday 11 November 2026.

This ceremony will be hosted by the Hilton RSL and attendees are invited to gather from 10.30am, with service to commence at 10.40am.

All are welcome.

The meaning of Remembrance Day

At 11am on 11 November 1918 the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than 4 years of war. Allied armies had driven the German invaders back, having inflicted heavy defeats upon them over the preceding four months. In November the Germans called for an armistice (a ceasefire) in order to secure a peace settlement. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month attained a special significance in the post-war years. The moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front became universally associated with the remembrance of those who had died in the war.

Poppies

The Flanders Poppy has been a part of Armistice or Remembrance Day ritual since the early 1920s and is also increasingly being used as part of ANZAC Day observances. During the First World War, poppies were seen to be among the first plants that sprouted from the devastation of the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. Soldiers’ folklore had it that the poppies were vivid red from having been nurtured in ground drenched with the blood of their comrades.

Poppies now adorn the panels of the Memorial’s Roll of Honour, pushed in beside names as a personal tribute to the memory of many of the thousands of individuals commemorated there. This practice originates from a spontaneous gesture made by people waiting to pay their respects at the interment of the Unknown Australian Soldier on 11 November 1993. After the main service, the public was invited to file through the Hall of Memory and lay a single flower by the tomb. To do this they had to queue along the cloisters, beside the Roll of Honour, and by the end of the day hundreds of poppies were found to have been pushed into the cracks between the panels.