World Tai Chi and Qigong Day

World Tai Chi and Qigong Day (WTCQD), also spelled World T'ai Chi and Ch'i Kung Day, is an annual event held the last Saturday of April each year to promote the related disciplines of T'ai chi ch'uan and Qigong in nearly eighty countries since 1999.

World Tai Chi & Qigong Day also acts as an information source on medical research and finding classes in those disciplines.

The annual April event is open to the general public, and begins in the earliest time zones of Samoa at 10 am, and then participants across Oceania, Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America take part, with celebrations in eighty nations and several hundred cities, ending with the final events in the last time zones of Hawaii almost an entire day later. Celebrations include mass t'ai chi ch'uan and qigong exhibitions in many cities, and free classes in most participating cities.

World Tai Chi and Qigong Day's stated goals are to:

The local events are independently organized by local Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong schools, groups, and associations. The format of events varies by locality, although most involve free classes and mass exhibitions. International organizing for the event is done at the World Tai Chi and Qigong Day office in Overland Park, Kansas.

The global event began in 1999. However the first event, that inspired the global event, was held in Kansas City, Missouri in 1998 on the lawn of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in midtown Kansas City, where the Kansas City Tai Chi Club held a mass Tai Chi exhibition and teach-in involving nearly two-hundred people.CNN Headline News covered the event, which generated interest beyond Kansas City to quickly grow into a national and international event in the following years. World Tai Chi and Qigong Day has been officially proclaimed by governors of twenty-five US states, the senates of California, New York, and Puerto Rico, by Brazil's National Council of Deputies, and officials in several nations.

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