Google Calendar finally fixed its most frustrating problem

While there are several reputable alternatives to Google Calendar, the search giant’s calendar offering remains very popular among people who already use the company’s other services, like Gmail, and want a closely aligned tool to manage their schedule. While the service, which can be a great productivity app for many, has a lot to like, one of its notable limitations has long frustrated people who like to keep their entire lives organized. Google Calendar previously only offered 11 colors for coloring events, which meant users with a ton of events in their calendar were forced to reuse colors, making it harder to identify categories or types of events with just a visual glance. Luckily, that’s changing now, as Google is expanding the default color palette in Calendar to 24 colors while also adding a full RGB color picker to access up to 200 custom colors.

Google says this update responds to a long-standing request from businesses as well as personal Calendar users. The feature update is already rolling out and will first reach Google Workspace accounts on the “Rapid Release” channel, followed by accounts on “Scheduled Release.” It will eventually be offered to all Google Workspace customers, individual subscribers, and personal Google accounts. However, as the color update is part of an expanded rollout, it may take weeks to reach all users, and the actual rollout for accounts on “Scheduled Release” channels will begin on June 29, 2026.

Although Google Calendar’s expanded color selection for events includes a full RGB color picker on the web version and access via the Calendar API, mobile app users will only get 24 colors by default. While people would certainly have preferred to have a full RGB color picker on mobile, since many interactions with Google Calendar happen on mobile devices, the increase from 11 to 24 is at least some consolation. Additionally, Google noted that the expanded color palette will have no admin controls for Google Workspace users and will be enabled by default. This means your account admin can’t stop you from using any new colors you’ll soon have access to.

Once you have access to the enhanced color options, using them is quite simple. You can simply choose one of the 24 default colors when adding or editing an event, or click the edit option (if using the web version) to choose another from the RGB color picker. Remember that your event colors are only visible to you, even if you share your calendar. However, if you have allowed others to edit your calendar, they can see the event colors.

Google has made many quality-of-life improvements to Calendar in 2026. The company previously made it easier to find and set different time zones for events and tweaked the web version to better fit large, high-resolution monitors.