Ceremony outlines from the track.

Your cancer organisation has its own ceremony guidance, and it comes first. What follows is what Relayers added when someone asked for ideas, gathered from many events in many countries. Take what fits your track.

The opening ceremony

Thirty minutes is enough. The order most Relays use:

1. A welcome from the event lead, and thanks to everyone for coming.
2. A song or an anthem. Ask a primary-school choir to sing it. Their parents will come, and stay.
3. A moment of reflection where that is the custom. If your community is mixed, choose words that include everyone. One Relayer asked for a reading that was not tied to any faith, and the group agreed it was missing.
4. Introduce the committee and the team captains. One Relay lets each captain choose a song, plays a few seconds of it as they walk up, and gives them one minute to say what their team's campsite is doing and why they Relay.
5. One speaker, not five. A survivor, a caregiver, a local doctor who treats cancer, a council member who had cancer, a Global Hero of Hope, or a local television presenter with a story of their own.
6. The Survivor lap, led by a school band or drum line, with everyone else lining the track. Caregivers join for the second lap.

Ideas Relayers said made it special

• Heroes to heroes. The local fire brigade places the sashes or medals on the survivors and caregivers.
• A purple carpet, ten feet long, donated by a carpet shop, for survivors to walk as they are introduced.
• Angel caregivers. Caregivers whose person has died are still caregivers. One Relay gives them a small gift and a purple rope, and they finish the lap holding it together.
• The lone walker. Before the Survivor lap, one survivor walks the track alone for all the survivors who could not come. Then the rest join.
• Sashes that stay in the bag. If your survivors no longer wear their sashes, try pins instead, or a pinning moment at the start of the lap.

Keeping survivors with you

Many survivors leave after lunch and do not come back, and Relayers who are survivors say why: fatigue, heat, a rough track, treatment side effects. The advice from survivors themselves:

• Do not expect them to stay all day. Plan a two-hour block of things for survivors and caregivers, and print a schedule so they know what is on and when.
• Give them a home base: shade, chairs, water, snacks, and people to talk to. One Relay calls it adopting a survivor.
• A punch card or a coupon book they take around the campsites for a free cookie here and a free game there. Teams meet the people they walk for, and survivors stay to fill the card. A completed card goes into a draw for a basket.
• Things to do together: a one-hour painting class, chair massages, a short talk on staying active, bingo with small prizes, a caricature artist, purple roses from a florist.
• Let them leave and come back for the luminaria. Tell them the time twice, and consider valet parking for their return.

The Luminaria Ceremony

This is the moment every Relay in the world shares, and Relayers are careful with it. Read the Remember page first if you are new to it.

1. Timing. At dusk. A Relay that runs from eleven in the morning to eleven at night starts the ceremony at sunset, so the lap is in full dark. Some Relays hold it as a separate evening at another place, run by a school, so it is never rushed.
2. Lights down. The music stops. Everyone is asked to stand.
3. A reading. The one-candle poem. The empty chair, where three or four people share a loss in a few sentences. The empty table, with a white cloth that people sign as they pass, left up all night. A reading built on the months of the year, or on "I Relay for", read by young participants.
4. The names. Read slowly by two people while everyone walks. Or shown on a screen or a stadium scoreboard on a loop through the whole event, so people can find their own. Or simply let people walk and read the bags themselves. Each Relay chooses, and each choice has people who love it.
5. The lap, in silence. A bagpiper, a gospel choir, or a single musician playing softly is easier than a slideshow soundtrack, which fails more often than it works. "Every Candle Has a Name" was written for this lap.
6. Coming back. Do not go straight to the closing. Leave time. Then one more lap to celebrate the memories, with the music slowly returning.

Practical things Relayers shared

• Lighting. Glow sticks handed out unlit and broken together on a word. Battery tea lights. Balloon lights, which one Relay found brighter and cheaper than glow sticks.
• Weights. Sand in small bags, blocks of wood, or tins of food that are donated to a food bank the next morning.
• Spell it out. After the silent lap, participants place their glow sticks in cups on the far fence to spell CURE or HOPE.
• Rain. If the ceremony is washed out, hold it indoors the next week. Do not cancel it. One Relay's sound equipment failed in the rain; they ran a shortened ceremony by voice and more than fifty people stayed for it.
• Before the Relay. A luminaria display at a place of worship or a shop the week before shows people what the bags are. It often raises money too.

The Fight Back ceremony

Celebrate and Remember each have their moment: the survivor lap and the luminaria. Fight Back is the third word, and many Relays give it a moment of its own, usually near the end of the night or as the sun comes up. Not every Relay does this, and the ones that do all do it differently. This is what Relayers describe:

• One thing each. Everyone is asked to name one thing they will do about cancer in the coming year: book a screening, stop smoking, wear sunscreen, walk more, bring one new person to next year's Relay, or give an hour to the committee. Small and specific works better than big and vague.
• Write it down. Cards handed out at the start of the night and collected in a box, a large board or banner that people sign, or a ribbon tied to a fence. Some Relays read a few out; some post a photograph of the full board afterwards.
• Say it together. A short pledge read aloud by everyone on the track, led by a survivor, a caregiver, or a young Relayer. One line is enough.
• At sunrise. Relays that run overnight often place it at first light, after the quiet of the luminaria and before the closing, so the night ends on what happens next.
• Make it real for your country. Point people to the screening programme, quit line, or prevention campaign your cancer organisation actually runs, so a promise made on the track has somewhere to go on Monday.

The closing

Relayers disagree about the order, and both ways work:

• Luminaria, then closing. Allow time between them. A fire performer or a live band after the lap brings the mood back so people do not leave sad. Then the closing.
• Closing and awards first, luminaria last. People take as long as they want on the final laps and leave on the strongest moment.

• The bell. A poem about the bell that patients ring at the end of treatment, then every participant walks a final lap and rings a bell once, for themselves or for someone who cannot.
• Three short speakers, one each for Celebrate, Remember, and Fight Back, with glow sticks and music, before the last lap.
• Announce the total. Give the team awards. Draw the finish-the-fight bracelet. Say the date of next year's Relay.
• End on a song that sends people out empowered, not silent. One Relayer's rule: nobody leaves sad, everybody leaves with something to do.

Through the night

For the Relays that still go overnight, the hours from ten in the evening to six in the morning need filling. What Relayers do:

• Midnight bingo, with each team bringing five small prizes from a discount shop. It runs for hours.
• A local astronomy club with telescopes. They love a late night and a crowd, and children and adults both stay.
• A film at two in the morning. Karaoke at midnight. A pyjama or bed-head contest at four. Frozen-turkey bowling has been seen.
• Soup at midnight, collected from restaurants before they close. A pancake breakfast at six, cooked by the fire brigade or a service club.
• A silent disco or a glow walk, if noise rules are strict after midnight.
• A Zumba or stretch class at sunrise, led by a local instructor.

Songs Relayers play

Suggested by Relayers for the ceremonies. Check the rights for public performance where you are.

• For the Luminaria lap: "Every Candle Has a Name" (Tom Willner, written for the ceremony); "Supermarket Flowers" (Ed Sheeran); "It's OK" (Nightbirde, the acoustic version).
• For the Survivor lap and the last lap: "Rise Up" (Andra Day); "Fight Song" (Rachel Platten); "Unstoppable" (Sia); "The Climb" (Miley Cyrus); "Hold My Hand" (Lady Gaga); "Feeling Stronger Every Day" (Chicago); "Heroes" (David Bowie); "I Will Survive"; "We Are the Champions"; "Don't Stop Me Now" (Queen); "Times Like These" and "My Hero" (Foo Fighters).
• Written for Relay: "Relay For Life" (Jon Christopher Davis), and the Relay songs with chord charts on this site.

These answers were gathered in September 2026 from hundreds of replies in the two Relay community groups on Facebook, then rewritten in plain words for Relayers in any country. No one is named without their permission. If you recognise your idea here, thank you. Amounts are what people reported, in their own currency. Your national cancer organisation has the final word on what is allowed at your Relay.