Mark the date: 18 July 2026 is PADI Women's Dive Day, now in its 12th year. What started as a single celebration day has grown into one of the largest annual events in the diving calendar, and this year PADI is pairing the celebration with something with real teeth: citizen science.
PADI has now certified more than 30 million divers across 183 countries — and this year, one dive day is turning into a global citizen-science dataset.
The 2026 theme, "Celebrate Community. Create Change," builds directly on PADI's existing Dive Against Debris program, run through the PADI AWARE Foundation. Rather than treating the day as purely ceremonial, PADI is asking participating divers to turn dives that day into contributions toward shark, ray, and broader ocean biodiversity data, feeding into a citizen science dataset that's already used to inform real conservation policy and research decisions.
A Simple Way to Take Part
For dive shops and instructors, PADI has laid out a genuinely simple way to take part: host a local dive or event, invite both existing and prospective customers along, and share it using the #PADIWomensDiveDay and #padiwomen hashtags. For divers without a shop hosting anything nearby, PADI's own online content push on the day is built to be followed and shared regardless of location.
It's a good moment to note what PADI actually represents at this point: over 60 years running, more than 30 million people certified, 128,000 professional members and 6,600 dive centres and resorts across 183 countries, according to PADI's own figures. Whatever specific event you take part in on the 18th, or whether you just read up on it, it's one of the more concrete examples of a training organisation turning a calendar date into measurable ocean data rather than just a hashtag.
Image credit: NOAA diver conducting an underwater reef survey