How to spot and remove spam calendar events on iPhone

The short answer

Junk events reach an iPhone through a spam calendar subscription or through invitations a stranger sent to your email address. To clear a subscription, open Calendar, tap Calendars, tap the info button next to the one you don't recognize and choose Unsubscribe. For a single junk invitation, open it and tap Report Junk, then Delete and Report Junk. Every calendar you subscribe to comes off the same way, including ones you signed up for on purpose.

Where do spam calendar events come from?

Apple's page on scams lists “unwanted Calendar invitations and subscriptions” among the tricks it warns about. On an iPhone they arrive by two separate routes.

A subscription starts with a link. Apple's iPhone guide says you can subscribe to a calendar “by tapping a link to it”, and from then on whoever runs that calendar decides what's in it. Your phone shows whatever events they add.

Invitations come to your email address. iCloud shows them as notifications in the Calendar app unless you've set it to email them to you. If your iPhone also has a Gmail account set up, Google Calendar's “Add invitations to my calendar” setting decides what reaches that calendar. With “From everyone” chosen, Google says “All invitations are automatically added to your calendar.”

How do you remove a spam calendar subscription?

These are the steps from Apple's article for iOS 26 and later.

Open Calendar and tap Calendars.
Find the calendar you don't recognize and tap the info button next to it.
Tap Unsubscribe, or Delete Calendar if that's what the screen offers, and confirm.
To report it while you're there, choose Unsubscribe and Report Junk. Apple says this sends the calendar to Apple “as a suspected junk subscription”.

A few calendars, US Holidays for one, can't be removed. Apple's suggestion for those is to hide them by unticking them in the Calendars list.

The info screen of a subscribed calendar in the iPhone Calendar app, with the Unsubscribe button — In Calendar on iPhone, the info screen of a subscribed calendar has Unsubscribe at the bottom.

How do you get rid of a junk invitation?

Open the event. When it's from someone outside your contacts, Apple's steps are Report Junk, then Delete and Report Junk. To remove it without a report, tap Delete Event, then Delete Event again.

If strangers keep sending invitations to your iCloud address, iCloud can email them to you instead of showing them as notifications in Calendar. On an iPhone with iOS 17 or later, go to Settings, your name, iCloud, tap Show All, then iCloud Calendar, then Send & Receive, and set Receiving to Email.

Invitations that came in through a Gmail account need Google's tools. In the Google Calendar app, open the event and tap More, then Report as spam, then Report. Google only takes reports for events sent from Google Calendar. To keep the next ones off your calendar, tap Menu, then Settings, General, Adding invitations, Add invitations to my calendar, and choose “Only if the sender is known”. Our guide to Google's known-senders setting explains who counts as known.

Should you tap anything in a spam event?

Leave its links alone. A link in a spam event goes wherever the sender wants, and every fix above works from the Calendars list or from the event's own buttons, so you never have to open one. If you already typed a password or a code into a page one of these events sent you to, Apple's article on a compromised Apple Account lists what to do next.

How is a calendar you chose to follow different?

We make TheyCal, which puts businesses' events on the calendars of people who follow them, so this section describes ours. People on Apple Calendar get a private calendar link.

The link only exists once you ask for it. You start on the business's own page with your first name and email, then press the button in the email we send you. On the page that opens, you tap “Follow and get my calendar link”, then “Subscribe in Apple Calendar”, then Subscribe, then Add. Events from every business you follow go into one calendar named TheyCal, and the notes of each event end with “From” and the business's name, plus the address of a page where you can change what you get. That page asks you to sign in to TheyCal. If you signed up with only your name and email, you don't have a password yet, so tap “Forgot?” on the sign-in page and set one from the email we send. Once you're in, you can switch off the kinds of events you don't want or unfollow a business. To clear every business at once without signing in, unsubscribe from the TheyCal calendar on your iPhone. Unfollowing takes its upcoming events off your calendar the next time your phone checks the link.

	A spam calendar	A TheyCal calendar link
How it got there	A link you tapped	You asked for it on a business's page and confirmed by email
Its name in your Calendars list	Whatever the sender picked	TheyCal
Who each event is from	Whatever the sender wrote	“From” and the business's name, at the end of the notes
Changing what you get	Unsubscribing is the only control	Switch off kinds of events, or unfollow one business
Removing all of it	Unsubscribe in Calendar	Unsubscribe in Calendar, with the same steps

A business's event opened in Apple Calendar on an iPhone, with the business's name and the address of a page to change what you get at the end of the notes — Each event in a TheyCal calendar link ends with the business's name and the address of a page where you can change what you get.

People on Google Calendar or Outlook connect that calendar instead, and the business's events go into it directly. Our guide on what an app can see when you connect your calendar covers that permission, and “How did this event get in my calendar?” walks through every route an event can take.

Common questions

Does unsubscribing delete every event from that calendar?

Yes. The events belong to the subscribed calendar, so they leave your iPhone along with it. Subscribed calendars are read-only, which is why you can't delete their events one at a time.

Has my iPhone been hacked?

Apple treats a spam calendar as something you remove. Its scams page says: “If you might have unintentionally subscribed to a spam Calendar, you can delete it.” If you entered a password or a code on a page a spam event linked to, follow Apple's steps for a compromised account.

I deleted the spam events and more turned up. Why?

The source is still there. Remove the subscription itself from the Calendars list. If the junk sits in a Gmail calendar, report it in Google Calendar and switch on “Only if the sender is known”.

Can a business put events on my calendar without asking?

Anyone with your email address can send you an invitation, and while Google Calendar's setting is “From everyone”, every invitation goes on your calendar. TheyCal starts sending a business's events once you follow it and either connect your calendar or subscribe to your link.