Pirelli Calendar

Annual trade calendar

The Pirelli Calendar, known and trade marked as "The Cal", is an annual trade calendar which has been published by the UK subsidiary of the Italian tyre manufacturing company Pirelli since 1964. The calendar has a reputation for its choice of photographers and models and featured glamour photography from the 1980s until the 2010s. The calendar is produced with limited availability ( are printed annually). Copies do not go on sale, but are instead given as corporate gifts to celebrities and select Pirelli customers. The annual production cost was about US$2 million in 2017. Marco Tronchetti Provera, Pirelli's CEO from 1992 to 2022, commented that the purpose of the Cal is "to mark the passing of time" by recording the zeitgeist.

The Cal was originally created by the British art director Derek Forsyth. it became an annual publication from 1964. Publication was discontinued after the 1974 issue as an economizing cutback in response to the world recession resulting from the 1973 oil crisis. It was resurrected 10 years later and has been published regularly since then except for 2021. For the first ten years of the calendar's existence, it included photographs of fully clothed women, but an emphasis on nudity developed during the 1980s. The 1987 calendar, photographed by Terrence Donovan, was the first to feature only black models, included a bare bottomed 16 year old Naomi Campbell. The models were photographed topless in Savannah like settings and styled in tribal fashion. The 2010 calendar, photographed by Terry Richardson, used similar imagery to that which was used in the calendar in the 1960s. In 2014 Pirelli released an unpublished calendar from 1986 shot by photographer Helmut Newton. Yoko Ono and Patti Smith to represent inspiring women of diverse ages In 2024, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Cal, Prince Gyasi became the first black photographer to produce an edition of the calendar.