World Sight Day

World Sight Day is an annual event to raise awareness of blindness and the importance of eye care.

World Sight Day takes place on the second Thursday in October, and this year it was on Thursday 9 October 2025. It’s organised by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and the World Health Organization.

How we celebrated World Sight Day in 2025

This year, our #EyeCreation challenge focused on individuals – your own eye shapes, alongside your own story.

To celebrate the day, we asked our partners, donors and the public to use any materials they had at home or in the office to make an eye shape (using our gallery below for inspiration). We asked participants to share their eye creations with us on social media, alongside a video or a couple of lines about why eye health is so important to them.

Why eye health matters

Globally, 1.1 billion people have an untreated or preventable visual impairment. That’s an eighth of the world’s population – almost as many people as in Europe and the USA combined.

When someone loses their sight, it affects every aspect of their life. For a child, such as Luyando, sight loss can mean missing out on an education and early intervention to correct a child’s vision can boost their lifetime earnings by up to 78%. For an adult, sight loss can mean losing their independence and income, too.

World Sight Day highlights the importance of eye health and promotes the need for everyone to have equal access to eye care.

At Sightsavers, we believe nobody should be blind from avoidable causes, and we want everybody to be able to get eye treatment when they need it. A pair of glasses or an operation to remove cataracts can transform people’s lives.