Happy Global Beatles Day!

Join in the worldwide celebrations and play along to "All You Need is Love" in the Learn app. Love is all you need... but a little practice might help!

ROLI Team

25 June 2026

On 25 June 1967, The Beatles walked into Studio One at Abbey Road and did something no band had attempted before. As Britain's contribution to the BBC's Our World, the band performed "All You Need Is Love" to an estimated 400 million people across 25 countries, all watching in the same moment in the world’s first live international satellite broadcast. The song was written for the occasion, and its message was deliberately written to be simple enough to cross every language barrier: love is all you need.

Six decades have passed since then, but the legacy of that broadcast lives on, and it’s the reason we have Global Beatles Day. Established in 2009 by Faith Cohen, a lifelong fan from Indianapolis who first fell for the band as a child in 1964, she was inspired by the playful spirit of invented holidays like Talk Like a Pirate Day, and found herself asking why there wasn't a day set aside simply to celebrate one of the most iconic bands in music history, so she made one.

In Cohen’s own words, she “envisioned it as a true tribute, a love letter from the world back to them. Not commercialized or trivialized, but something meaningful. Whether people celebrate by listening to their music, giving back, or simply reflecting, the goal is the same: to recognize the profound impact The Beatles have had on culture, connection, and humanity. And in doing so, to bring people together, just as their music always has.”

She "dreamed it into existence and shared it as if it already were", building a dedicated website, setting up Facebook groups with the help of fellow fan and music-industry veteran Cheryl Gregory, and choosing 25 June precisely because of the Our World anniversary.

Since then, the day has become a tradition among Beatles fans worldwide and this year brings a real milestone: Apple Corps, the company The Beatles founded, has formally recognised the day for the first time, with CEO Tom Greene writing to Cohen to praise a celebration that, in his words, "asks nothing more than for people, wherever they are, to stop, listen, and share a little joy." To mark the occasion, a newly colourised version of the original Our World performance is being released free on YouTube, giving a new generation the chance to relive that global moment in colour.

Learning to play "All You Need Is Love" on piano

"All You Need Is Love" has the trademark charm and inventive quality we love from The Beatles in spades. Its verses are lilting and playful, usually counted in an unusual-for-conventional-pop 7/4 time signature — if seven beats to the bar sounds daunting, you can also feel them as bars of four alternating with bars of three. The chorus returns to a comfortable and familiar 4/4, and is arguably the secret to the song's gentle sway.

The harmony is elegant, too: across the chorus, the melody often holds on a single note while the chords move beneath it, and the recording bookends itself with playful quotations, opening on "La Marseillaise" and closing with snatches of "Greensleeves" from Bach, and the band's own "She Loves You". While the song itself was written as an anthem to global unity, it also became one that championed musical unity, showing how just one song can open a door onto a whole web of musical history.

Play along with The Beatles

Want to join in with the celebrations? You can! And the best part is, you don’t have to just listen to the music, you can play it! "All You Need Is Love" is available to play in ROLI Learn, along with plenty more Beatles classics. You can mark the day with the band's music at your fingertips and play along with the rest of the world. Join in with #GlobalBeatlesDay and be sure to tag us @roli_learn.

All you need is love — and maybe a little practice, but we can help with that.

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