World Organ Donation Day 2025: Date, theme, history, significance—all you need to know

The day also seeks to encourage individuals to consider becoming donors and to pay tribute to the selfless contributions made by donors and their families.

World Organ Donation Day is observed on August 13 each year, and this year, in 2025, it falls on a Wednesday, with the theme “Answering The Call“, as designated by the Organ Donation and Transplant Alliance.

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The theme both honours professionals in this field and calls for greater collaboration, emphasising the crucial role that these individuals play in the organ donation community and being a call to action for further progress in organ donation and transplantation.

Ronald Lee Herrick was the first person to donate an organ. In 1954, he donated his kidney to his twin brother, and Dr Joseph Murray performed the successful organ transplant.

Later, in 1990, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for pioneering breakthroughs in organ transplantation.

On #WorldOrganDonationDay, let’s remember that the gift of life is the greatest gift one can give.

Let’s pledge, inspire, and give hope through the gift of life. pic.twitter.com/rfdmIifKYA

— Ministry of Health (@MoHFW_INDIA) August 13, 2025

In India, National Organ Day was observed on November 27th to encourage the act of organ donation and established in 2010 by the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and continued until 2022.

However, it was later shifted to the 3rd of August, commemorating India’s first successful deceased-donor heart transplant on August 3rd, 1994.