Recurring events established in 1986

Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance" held annually in the western United States. The event's name comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night, the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Since 1990, the event has been at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. According to Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, the event is guided by ten stated principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.

The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria – often abbreviated as MBGN – was a pageant organised by Silverbird Group with the main purpose of sending representatives to international competitions. Originally known as Miss Universe Nigeria, it was renamed Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria after news publishers Daily Times lost their license to send delegates from rival contest Miss Nigeria to Miss World. As of 2005, the pageant produced multiple representatives, but the MBGN World recipient was considered the overall winner. Miss Universe Nigeria was reestablished in 2023, breaking away from MBGN and operating as an entirely different pageant. In 2024, Miss World Nigeria became a separate pageant in its own right, thus ending the MBGN competition.

The Golden Bear of Zagreb (Croatian: Zlatni medvjed) was an annual figure skating competition held in Zagreb, Croatia. Held since 1986, the event was organized by the Medveščak Figure Skating Club. It was originally a companion event to the Golden Spin of Zagreb, intended for junior- and novice-level skaters. In 2012, senior-level events were added. Medals were awarded in men's singles, women's singles, and pair skating.

The Vancouver International Jazz Festival is a jazz festival held every summer in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The Singapore Writers Festival is a literary event organised by the National Arts Council. Inaugurated in 1986, the festival serves a dual function of promoting new and emerging Singaporean and Asian writing to an international audience, as well as presenting foreign writers to Singaporeans.

The International Franz Liszt Piano Competition ("Liszt Competition") is an international piano competition. It is a member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions.

Magnum Opus Con (MOC) was an annual multigenre convention which generally took place each spring in various cities in the U.S. states of Georgia and South Carolina from 1986 to 2001. Organized by comics retailer Roland Castle, the convention was designed to attract science fiction fans of all stripes. Over its 16-year run, MOC featured hundreds of celebrity guests and ran hundreds of hours of programming for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, gaming, and other elements of fandom.

The Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project - formerly the Jimmy Carter Work Project (JCWP) - is an annual home building blitz organized by Habitat for Humanity International and its affiliates. It generally takes place in the United States one year, and an international location the next. President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter helped Habitat volunteers renovate the 19-unit building, and media coverage brought attention to Habitat, which had been founded in 1976 in Americus, Georgia, a short distance from Carter's hometown of Plains, Georgia. Even though President Carter said repeatedly he never intended to start an annual project, the following year the Carters returned to the same site to finish the renovation work. On October 10, 2013, as part of the 30th annual project, the Carters returned to the building and met with families living there.

The Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup Tag Team Tournament (also known simply as the Crockett Cup) is a professional wrestling event produced annually by the professional wrestling promotion, National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). The event features a tag team professional wrestling tournament with the Crockett Cup awarded to the winning tag team.