Happy Wear A Hat Day everyone!
Since Wear A Hat Day launched in 2010, one of the UK’s biggest and best-loved brain tumour awareness and fundraising days, it has raised more than £2.2 million, enabling scientific breakthroughs at our Centres of Excellence and helping us push governments to invest more in life-saving research.
We have given hundreds of media interviews over the years about Wear A Hat Day and the call has always remained that UK Governments need to do more to support vital research.
Persistent, tenacious and passionate campaigning since 2010 has meant that at the end of the first quarter of 2026 we can reflect on the NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium and the progress toward full deployment of money made available in 2018, the Rare Cancers Act, and the focus on rare cancers, including brain tumours, in the National Cancer plan. We have a new drug available in Scotland and just this week we have been learning about an aligned pathway, which launches on 1st April and will help to bring NICE's decision-making process forward to run alongside MHRA's, resulting in decisions on licencing and value being made at the same time; Patients to get new medicines up to 6 months sooner.
This meant that when we met with our good friend and former science minister George Freeman MP at the launch of The Brain Tumour Charity’s report ‘Unlocking Innovation for Brain Tumours in the UK’ we were able to say that things are looking more hopeful than they have ever done and to thank him for the part he has played in this (he was responsible in no small way for the £40 million becoming available for allocation in 2018).
We know there are grievances, we know things can’t move quickly enough, we know the desperation we all feel for real progress and for there always to be available a glimmer of hope for someone newly diagnosed with a brain tumour.
We know because we have been listening to, and sharing, your stories for all this time and finally, on Wear A Hat Day 2026, it really does feel that people in power have been listening too and that momentum is building.
So, we wish the scientists involved in the consortium good luck. We also encourage scientists to get in touch with Government funders like the NIHR and UKRI to seek funding and we thank each and every one of you for your campaigning support.
That’s it for this week.
We’ll be back with a campaigning update after a break for Easter, so wishing you all a peaceful time until Friday 17th April when we will have news about the next meeting of our APPG, we should have details of a webinar you can join to find out more about the NIHR consortium and, fingers crossed, there will be another exciting news item too!
Karen, Hugh, Katherine and Jana.
