Secretariat of National Anniversaries was established as an organisational unit of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage in February 2003. At present it organises national anniversary celebrations in the background institution of the cultural ministry, the Balassi Bálint Hungarian Cultural Institute. The existence of the permanent Secretariat guarantees a well-organised and high-level communication of the moral and communal messages of the anniversaries and a promotion and harmonisation of the civil initiatives on the anniversaries on a year-by-year basis. Previously, centralised bodies were created to organise the celebrations on the occasion of the Hungarian Millennium, as well as for the second centenary of Lajos Kossuth’s birth, but only for these particular events.

The Secretariat of National Anniversaries participated in elaborating the National Memory Programme of the Hungarian Republic that was accepted by the government by decree in 2003. Within the framework of the programme, an outstanding cultural history jubilee of Hungary is commemorated every year. Thus there is no need to adopt a separate government decree for each anniversary, as an opportunity is now presented to celebrate them on the basis of the memorial years in the programme.

The organisational tasks of the Secretariat of National Anniversaries are as follows: promoting anniversary events, inviting tenders and conducting competitions, co-ordinating the activity of the concerned ministries, local authorities, and social structures in connection with the given memorial year, as well as popularising the Anniversaries.