Putin: No celebration, officially
Vladimir Putin has mastered the art of officially not celebrating. When he turned 60 in 2012, the Kremlin said he did not like big birthday parties. His supporters, meanwhile, produced a wave of adulation that the Associated Press likened to the world’s strangest personality cults. For his 62nd in 2014, months after the annexation of Crimea, Putin took a day off deep in Siberia. Back in Moscow, an exhibition portrayed his achievements as the Twelve Labours of Hercules, and 100,000 people marched in his honour in Grozny, led by Kadyrov. For his 70th in 2022, Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko gave him a gift certificate for a tractor.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, his birthdays have been deliberately dull. In 2025 he spent the day working, meeting the Security Council and taking calls. The Kremlin acknowledged the calls came from “friendly” countries. Narendra Modi was among the callers.
In monarchies of all hues
The earliest textual evidence for birthday celebration comes from five Old Sumerian cuneiform tablets from Lagash, dated to the 24th century BC, which list temple offerings made on the occasion of births in the royal family of King Lugalanda.
The Roman tradition provides the most thoroughly documented case, with the dies natalis of the emperor integrated into the imperial cult alongside the dies imperii (accession anniversary), both celebrated with sacrifices, games, and panegyrics.
In Muscovite Russia, Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich began celebrating his birthday from 1676, and Peter the Great from at least 1690, with Peter’s celebrations including target shooting with rifles and cannons after the feast.
Ottoman sultans also began officially celebrating their own birthdays in the 19th century, with Abdulhamit hosting banquets, granting amnesties, and rallying celebrations through embassies abroad.
More recently, the ruler’s birthday is not always part of how the system works in a monarchy, barring a few.
For example, the Gulf’s hereditary rulers have plenty of state pageantry, but little of it is timed to their own birthdays. In Saudi Arabia, the religious establishment has long been wary of birthday parties. But in Bahrain, there was a grand for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah’s 80th birthday.
In Europe’s sovereign monarchies, which function merely as ceremonial constitutional systems, there are parades for the monarch’s birthday, but the actual heads of governance mostly keep their birthdays private affairs.
In constitutional monarchy Thailand, December 5, the late King Bhumibol’s birthday, is both National Day and Father’s Day. King Vajiralongkorn’s birthday on July 28 is also a holiday. After Queen Mother Sirikit died in October 2025, the cabinet decided that her birthday, August 12, would remain a public holiday, observed as Mother’s Day. Thai Prime Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, celebrated his 60th birthday this month, with a private ceremony with his family at his home in Samut Prakan province, alongside visits and well-wishes from politicians, public officials, and business leaders.
Japan, another constitutional monarchy, keeps the reigning emperor’s birthday, now February 23, as a national holiday. The public details of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s own birthday are quiet, barring wishes from dignitaries.
The good (or at least the boring)
In China, Mao’s six rules
The Chinese Communist Party saw the danger early. In March 1949, months before taking power, a party plenum at the village of Xibaipo adopted six rules proposed by Mao. The first was a ban on birthday celebrations. The others banned gifts, limited toasts and applause, and prohibited naming places after party leaders.
Mao, of course, went on to build one of the 20th century’s most extravagant personality cults anyway. But the birthday rule has lasted. When the current president, Xi Jinping, presided over the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth in 2013, the People’s Daily left it off the front page, and Xi said revolutionary leaders were human beings, not gods to be worshipped. When Xi, who marks his birthday privately, turned 73 this June, the most visible expression came from .
In Germany, lectures and symposiums
Friedrich Merz is the first German chancellor over 70 since Konrad Adenauer. He treated November 11, 2025, as a normal working day, followed by an evening reception at the Reichstag.
The current president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier celebrated his 70th birthday on January 5, 2026, by hosting a high-profile political symposium in Berlin.
Years before, as chancellor, Angela Merkel turned 60 on July 17, 2014, after an EU summit that had just agreed tougher sanctions on Russia. At the press conference, a German TV reporter started singing “Happy Birthday” and nobody joined in. Merkel joked that it might have gone better if she had sung along. That evening, at her party’s headquarters, the entertainment was a lecture on the time horizons of history, chosen by Merkel herself. It was followed by a reception for up to 1,000 guests, with beer and wine.
Macron with the troops, Meloni with Hello Kitty
French president Emmanuel Macron spent his 48th birthday, December 21, 2025, at a military base near Abu Dhabi. It was the French president’s customary year-end visit to troops stationed abroad, and there he announced that France would build a new aircraft carrier. The birthday was incidental.
The Italian government did not officially mark Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s birthday. She turned 49 on January 15, 2026, during an official visit to Tokyo, and it was another government that marked the occasion. The next day, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi led her delegation in singing “Happy Birthday” in Italian, brought out a cake, and gave Meloni earrings and Hello Kitty gifts for her daughter.
FDR: A birthday that helped fight polio
Franklin Roosevelt lost the use of his legs to polio at 39. In 1933, a public relations man suggested holding dances across the country on the president’s birthday to raise money for Roosevelt’s polio foundation at Warm Springs. According to one account, Roosevelt’s response was: “If my birthday will be of any help, take it.”
In 1934, the first year, 600 Birthday Balls in 4,376 communities raised more than $1 million. The effort grew into the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Its March of Dimes campaign, named by the entertainer Eddie Cantor, sent millions of dimes to the White House. The foundation went on to help fund the research behind Jonas Salk’s vaccine, which was announced 10 years to the day after Roosevelt’s death. Using the president’s name to raise money for his favourite charity was an obvious conflict of interest even then. Still, it is hard to find a leader’s birthday producing some good.
Some good and bad in the class of 2026
Brazil and Mexico: A cake in Kuala Lumpur, a cake at the morning briefing
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva turned 80 on October 27, 2025, becoming Brazil’s first sitting president in his eighties. He spent the day not in Brasília but at the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur. At the gala dinner, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim led him to the stage, the guests sang, and he cut a cake. Lula joked that he hoped to live to 120 and complained that nobody had brought him presents.
Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum turned 64 on June 24 this year, while Mexico was co-hosting the football World Cup. She marked the day at her daily televised press conference. Reporters and officials sang Las Mañanitas, and she cut a chocolate cake while the Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four played. Then she moved on to the day’s government announcements.
Indonesia: The president’s favourite dish, served by the state
President Prabowo Subianto marked his 74th birthday on October 17, 2025, with a modest thanksgiving prayer at the presidential palace, attended by family members and cabinet ministers. The government, however, also instructed every kitchen in his flagship Free Nutritious Meals programme to serve his favourite dish that day: fried rice with a fried egg. According to the head of the National Nutrition Agency, that meant more than 7,000 nutrition centres across 38 provinces. Nobody went hungry because of it. But it shows how easily the machinery of a welfare scheme can be turned into a birthday card.
Turkey: No party, but a song
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been Turkey’s prime minister or president since 2003. By custom he holds no birthday party. When he turned 70 in 2024, supporters handed him a cake outside his Istanbul residence as he left for an opening ceremony. For his 72nd birthday this February, his AK Party released a song and a video about his rise from the backstreets of Istanbul, with a refrain wishing the “Reis” (chief) many more years.