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Tickets Please

Featured Events

Featured Events

Featured events let you highlight the events that matter most. Mark an event as featured and it gets visual prominence in calendar views, list pages, and API responses. This is useful for promoting headliner events, registration deadlines, or anything you want visitors to notice first.

How Featuring Works

The featured flag is a simple meta field — _tribe_event_featured — stored as '1' (featured) or '' (not featured). There is no separate post status or taxonomy involved. An event is either featured or it is not.

When an event is featured:

  • It receives a CSS class on the frontend that you can target for custom styling.
  • It can be filtered in calendar and list views so featured events appear first or in a separate section.
  • The REST API includes a featured field in event responses and accepts it as a filter parameter.

From the Events List

The quickest way is the star icon in the Events list table in wp-admin. Each event row has a star column:

  • Click an empty star to mark the event as featured.
  • Click a filled star to remove the featured flag.

This is a quick-toggle action — no need to open the event editor.

From the Event Editor

In the event editor, the Event Options meta box (or sidebar panel in the Block Editor) includes a Featured Event checkbox. Check it and save the event.

Via the REST API

Send a POST or PUT request to the event endpoint with featured: true in the request body. To remove it, send featured: false.

PUT /wp-json/tribe/events/v1/events/{id}
Content-Type: application/json


{
  "featured": true
}

On the frontend, featured events receive a CSS class that distinguishes them from regular events. Use this class in your theme’s stylesheet to apply custom styling:

.tribe-events--featured {
  border-left: 4px solid #f0a500;
  background-color: #fffdf5;
}

The exact class name follows the pattern used in your active template. Check the rendered HTML on a featured event to confirm the class name in your setup.

In Calendar and List Views

Featured events can be prioritized in the events list and calendar views. Depending on your theme and template configuration, featured events may appear at the top of list views or display with a badge.

In the REST API

Filter the events endpoint to return only featured events:

GET /wp-json/tribe/events/v1/events?featured=true

Or exclude featured events to get the non-featured list:

GET /wp-json/tribe/events/v1/events?featured=false

In WP_Query

Query featured events directly:

$featured_events = new WP_Query( array(
    'post_type'  => 'tribe_events',
    'meta_key'   => '_tribe_event_featured',
    'meta_value' => '1',
) );

Common Questions

Can I feature more than one event at a time? Yes. There is no limit on the number of featured events. Mark as many as you want. If you feature too many, the distinction loses its value — aim for a handful at most.

Does featuring an event affect its position in search results? No. The featured flag does not change WordPress search ranking. It only affects event-specific views like the events list, calendar, and REST API queries.

Can I schedule an event to become featured on a specific date? Not with a built-in scheduler. You would need a cron job or custom code to toggle the _tribe_event_featured meta value on a schedule.

How do I show only featured events on a page? Use the Events List block (tickets-please/events-list) and configure it to filter by featured status. Alternatively, use the REST API or a custom WP_Query with the _tribe_event_featured meta filter.

Does the featured flag carry over to recurring event occurrences? Each occurrence is its own post with its own meta. Featuring the series or one occurrence does not automatically feature the others. You need to feature each occurrence individually.

Next Steps