Add to Google Calendar Link: How It Works and How to Make One

“Add to Google Calendar” buttons look like magic, but they’re just a carefully built link. Once you know the format you can make one for an email, a ticket confirmation or a button on any page. This guide explains how an add to Google Calendar link works, and how to cover Apple and Outlook users too.

On a WordPress events site? You don’t need to build links by hand: Monthly Events Calendar puts an Add to Calendar button on every event page, with Google, Apple, iCal, Outlook.com, Yahoo, Microsoft 365 and Teams. See the feature

The link format

An add to Google Calendar link opens Google Calendar’s “new event” screen with the details already filled in. It starts with:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE

and adds the event details as parameters:

Parameter	What it holds	Example
`text`	Event title	`Community%20Garden%20Day`
`dates`	Start and end, separated by `/`	`20261114T160000Z/20261114T230000Z`
`details`	Description (can include a link)	`Bring%20gloves.%20Details%3A%20https%3A%2F%2F...`
`location`	Address or place name	`Riverside%20Park%2C%20Springfield`
`ctz`	Time zone for the event (optional)	`America/Chicago`

Values must be URL-encoded: spaces become %20, commas %2C, and so on.

Getting the dates right

The dates value is where most hand-made links go wrong. There are three forms:

UTC time: 20261114T160000Z/20261114T230000Z — the Z means UTC. Convert your local time to UTC first (10 am in Chicago in November is 16:00 UTC).
Local time with a time zone: 20261114T100000/20261114T170000 plus &ctz=America/Chicago. Easier to read, and daylight saving is handled for you.
All-day: 20261114/20261115 — date only, and the end date is the day after the event ends.

A full example for a Saturday clean-up from 10 am to 5 pm in Chicago:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?action=TEMPLATE&text=Community%20Garden%20Day&dates=20261114T100000/20261114T170000&ctz=America/Chicago&location=Riverside%20Park&details=Bring%20gloves%20and%20water.

Test every link you build by opening it in a private browser window while logged in to a Google account.

What about Apple Calendar and Outlook?

Google’s link only works for Google Calendar. For everyone else, the standard is an .ics file (iCalendar): a small text file that Apple Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird and most phone calendar apps can open. A minimal one looks like this:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Example//Events//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:garden-day-2026@example.org
DTSTAMP:20261101T120000Z
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261114T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261114T170000
SUMMARY:Community Garden Day
LOCATION:Riverside Park
DESCRIPTION:Bring gloves and water.
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Strictly, a file that uses TZID should also include the time zone’s definition; giving the times in UTC (DTSTART:20261114T160000Z) avoids that. Outlook.com, Microsoft 365 and Yahoo also have their own “add event” links, each with a slightly different format — one reason most sites use a ready-made button rather than maintaining five link formats.

Where these links are useful

Confirmation emails after someone registers or buys a ticket.
Newsletters announcing an event.
Landing pages for a single event.
Event pages on your site — where a button with several calendar choices is friendlier than a single Google link.

Common mistakes

Wrong time after daylight saving — use a city time zone (ctz, TZID) rather than a fixed offset.
Unencoded characters — an & in the title breaks the link; encode it as %26.
One-day all-day events with the same start and end date — the end date must be the next day.
Changing the event later — a saved calendar entry doesn’t update itself. Tell people about changes by email too.

For more ways to turn page views into attendance, read how to promote events on your website.