London Poppy Day On Thursday 29th October 2026

Each year, a group of serving and ex-Service volunteers collect at tube and mainline stations across Central London during the morning and evening rush hours. In 2025, our volunteers collected over £1.47m - in a single day!

This year they're aiming even higher!  If you live in or near London and are able to help on 29 October please make contact through this link. 

Poppy Appeal Volunteering

The 2026 Poppy Appeal

As the custodians of Remembrance, The Royal British Legion calls on the nation to unite in commemorating Remembrance Sunday at the 2026 Cenotaph Parade in Whitehall on 8 November.

If you have any events planned for this years poppy appeal we will be glad to here from you. Please send your articles and photos to [email protected]

The Poppy

During a lull in the second battle of Ypres in 1916, Colonel John McCrae, a well known Professor of Medicine at the Canadian University, wrote on a page torn from his notebook, these lines:-

In Flanders' Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing fly
Scarcely heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from flailing hands we throw the torch
Be yours to hold high:
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' Fields.

In May 1918, Col. McCrae was brought as a stretcher case to one of the big hospitals on the coast of France. On the third evening he was wheeled to the balcony of his room to look over the sea towards Dover. The verses were obviously in his mind, for he said to the doctor who was in charge of his case, "Tell them, if ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep." That same night Col McCrae died. Each Remembrance Day the RBL lay a wreath on his grave - a tribute to a great man whose thoughts were always for others.