Where Relayers gather online.

The two big groups

Both groups are private. Press "Join", answer the short questions, and a moderator lets you in. Neither group allows selling, and the larger one asks members not to post personal contact details, to keep people safe from scams.

Official accounts

• Global Relay For Life posts its official news in a public Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/globalrfl. Anyone can follow it.
• American Cancer Society Relay For Life is on Facebook and Instagram.
• The Global Heroes of Hope have their own private group for Heroes only, and a public home at globalheroesofhope.com.
• Your national cancer organisation almost certainly has a Relay For Life page in your language. The events directory links to each one.

Smaller groups Relayers point each other to

• RFL Event Leadership Teams Support Community: for the people who run a Relay, with a "Fundraising Friday" idea most weeks.
• Bark For Life Community: for Relays for dogs and their people.
• American Cancer Society Fundraisers: the one place in the family of groups where you may share your own fundraiser.
• American Cancer Society Campus Relay For Life: a page for high-school and university Relays.
• Relay For Life of Second Life: a Relay that happens inside a virtual world, 36 hours long, with more than a thousand avatars walking a track. Its ideas travel well into the real world.

Search for each by name on Facebook. Names change now and then, so we do not link them directly.

Yearly moments that bring everyone together

• Relay First Lap, the second Saturday of January. Walk one lap wherever you are, on your own or with your team, and post it with #RelayFirstLap. It began as one person's idea in 2019 and now opens the Relay year on every continent.
• The Luminaria Exchange. Each year Relays sign up, then send a luminaria that represents their event to every other Relay on the list, to be displayed at their ceremony. Sign up early in the year and send your bags before the other Relays' dates, not after. The sign-up is posted in both groups each season.
• Printable candle bags from around the world. Charlotte Willcocks, a Relayer in the United Kingdom, collects photographs and maps from Relays everywhere into one printable file, so any Relay can display luminaria from other countries without posting a thing. Ask for the latest version in the Global Relay For Life Community.
• World Cancer Day, 4 February, and the announcement of each year's Global Heroes of Hope in November.

Watch and listen

• Global Relay Talk: video conversations between two Global Heroes of Hope and Relayers from around the world, shared in the Global Relay For Life Community.
• The 2024 Global Relay For Life recap on this site, and the film remembering Thelma Suson.

Your own country

Most partner cancer organisations run their own Relay For Life pages and groups in their own language. The global events directory links to each organisation's official site, and their Relay page is usually one click from there.

Manners

• Ask before you share someone else's story or photograph.
• Say where you Relay when you ask a question. Answers depend on it.
• When someone helps you, go back and tell them how it went. It is how the next person finds the answer.

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.