Holiday Calendar

National Cheese Pizza Day

Next celebratedSunday, September 5, 2027

National Cheese Pizza Day is for the pizza that is only dough, sauce and cheese. Order a plain slice, eat it while it is still too hot to hold properly, and notice the sauce for once.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATESeptember 5
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYFood
SUBCATEGORYPizza
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Traced to a retirement-community activities magazine.

No founder, sponsoring organisation or establishing record for National Cheese Pizza Day has been located. The phrase appears in none of the 47 volumes of Chase's Calendar of Events that HathiTrust indexes between 1961 and 2007, and its only appearance anywhere in that library is a 2008 issue of Creative Forecasting, a monthly for activity professionals in retirement communities.

See the 2008 print appearancevia babel.hathitrust.org
INTRO

Europe wrote the plain cheese pie into law

Neapolitan pizza had to get past two formal objections before European law would register it. Germany's complaint was about flour, and Poland's was that the name was not specific in itself. The dish under argument was the plain one, which is exactly what National Cheese Pizza Day marks.

Italy settled with Germany. It never settled with Poland, so the European Commission decided the case itself. Its regulation of 4 February 2010 entered the name Pizza Napoletana in the register.

Italy got its standard. It did not get the words. Protection of the name itself was never requested, so the specification defines the dish while the phrase stays unreserved.

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ORIGINS

Cheese Pizza Day history

INTRODUCTION

Chris Ostapenko makes about 100 cheese pizzas on a Friday night at Slice on Broadway in Pittsburgh. He took the same pizza to Las Vegas and won the 2025 World's Best Cheese Slice title at the International Pizza Challenge.

The category is new. The challenge only added a cheese-slice division in 2024, so the plainest pizza on any menu waited a long time for a title of its own.

CHAPTER 01

The rules that make a plain slice hard

The division's official rules are mostly prohibitions. Par-baking is banned. Once the pizza enters the oven, nothing may be added but a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, grated cheese and dry spices.

The Traditional division next door allows up to two toppings from a named list of nine, pepperoni and sausage among them. Cheese competitors pick their best three slices and the judging is blind. The winner takes $5,000.

Ostapenko cold ferments his dough for 48 hours and uses a house-made sauce. Pittsburgh declared 6 May 2025 Slice on Broadway Day in his honour.

CHAPTER 02

Naples wrote the ingredients down first

The Neapolitan rules are older, and they are written into European law. The specification Italy registered in Brussels lists what a Pizza Napoletana may be made from: wheat flour, brewer's yeast, drinkable water, peeled or small fresh tomatoes, sea or kitchen salt and extra virgin olive oil.

Garlic, oregano, mozzarella and fresh basil may be added. That is the whole legal universe of the dish. No meat appears anywhere in it.

CHAPTER 03

The craft, not the dish

In 2017 UNESCO inscribed the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It listed the craft rather than the food. About 3,000 pizzaiuoli live and work in Naples, and the skills pass mainly in the bottega.

National Cheese Pizza Day has no comparable paper trail. No founder or establishing record for it could be found. The phrase appears in none of the 47 volumes of Chase's Calendar of Events that HathiTrust indexes between 1961 and 2007.

Its earliest appearance in print is a 2008 issue of Creative Forecasting, a Colorado Springs monthly for activity professionals in retirement communities. The oldest trace of this day in a digitised library sits on an activities calendar.

TIMELINE

Timeline

The cheese-less Marinara is dated

The specification Italy later registered in Brussels dates the Marinara, tomato and no cheese at all, to this year.

The name reaches print

The only appearance of the phrase in HathiTrust's index is a 2008 issue of a monthly for retirement-community activity professionals.

Brussels registers Neapolitan pizza

Commission Regulation (EU) No 97/2010, dated 4 February, entered Pizza Napoletana in the register of traditional specialities guaranteed.

The day surfaces on listing sites

The earliest archived listing of the day on a holiday-listing site was captured in March, which dates the listing rather than the day.

UNESCO inscribes the pizzaiuolo

The art of the Neapolitan pizza maker joined the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The plain slice gets a title

The International Pizza Challenge added a World's Best Cheese Slice division, judged blind and closed to toppings.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Cheese Pizza Day

MARKET

The plain pie got four days, not one.

Round Table Pizza, owned by FAT Brands, announced a $5 personal cheese pizza for loyalty members with any purchase, running from 5 to 8 September 2025. The chain gave a single September date four days of offers at participating locations.

CLASSROOM

A land-grant university teaches it

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's extension service lists Cheese Pizza Day on its public food calendar for September 5. It pairs the date with its own crust and sauce recipes, pitched at a low-cost meal for a night when time is short.

REGULATION

The cheese alone has four legal definitions

Federal regulation recognises four legally distinct mozzarellas, separated by moisture and milkfat under 21 CFR 133.155 through 133.158. On a pizza with nothing else on it, which one the kitchen buys is not a small decision.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Cheese Pizza Day by the Numbers

485 °C
Wood-fired oven temperature, EU spec
60-90 sec
Maximum bake time, EU spec
~220-370 kcal
Energy in a cheese pizza slice
5.0B lb
US mozzarella made in 2025
4.0B lb
US cheddar made in 2025
The rules were simple: Make the best cheese pizza you can. I made the pizza as I do every day in the pizza shop, and the results paid off.
Chris OstapenkoSlice on Broadway, Pittsburgh

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Congress declared pizza a vegetable in 2011.

The truth

Section 743 of Public Law 112-55 barred USDA from spending money to implement a rule that would credit tomato paste and puree by volume. USDA's own final rule of 26 January 2012 says it therefore kept crediting paste on whole-food equivalency. Nothing in the statute calls pizza a vegetable.

The myth

The Margherita was invented for Queen Margherita in 1889.

The truth

The specification Italy registered with the European Commission dates the Margherita to 1796-1810 and says only that it was presented to the Queen of Italy on her visit to Naples in 1889.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Cheese Pizza Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Order the plainest thing on the menu

Skip the toppings once and eat a slice with nothing hiding the crust, the sauce or the cheese. Simplicity is the whole argument of the day.

BAKE

Bake one at home from scratch

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's extension service publishes a homemade crust and a quick pizza sauce for exactly this date. Both are written for a weeknight rather than a wood-fired oven.

READ

Read the recipe Brussels actually registered

The Pizza Napoletana specification runs from the gluten content of the flour to the angle at which the peel meets the oven. It is a recipe written as a legal standard, down to the last gram of oil.

WATCH

Watch a wood-fired oven do its work

Find a pizzeria with a real wood oven and stand where you can see the floor of it. A plain pizza gives you nothing to watch but the dough, the sauce and the heat.

BUY

Buy one from the grocery counter instead

About a quarter of the pizza Americans eat comes from a grocery store rather than a restaurant. Pick up a plain one from the counter or the freezer and see how it holds up beside the pizzeria version.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Cheese Pizza Day?

1 / 9

Which two countries lodged formal objections against registering the name Pizza Napoletana?

Answer

No. The Federal Register carries no document naming it, and no official status was found elsewhere, so September 5 is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

15sources
13primary records
11independently dated
Primary records
EUR-Lex, European Union2010-02-04
Commission Regulation (EU) No 97/2010 entering a name in the register of traditional specialities guaranteed [Pizza Napoletana (TSG)]
The permitted ingredients, size, oven temperature and bake time of Neapolitan pizza.
View source
UNESCO2017
Art of Neapolitan 'Pizzaiuolo'
The 2017 inscription of the pizza maker's craft, and the roughly 3,000 pizzaiuoli in Naples.
View source
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service2026-04
Dairy Products 2025 Summary
US mozzarella and cheddar production for 2025, broken out by state and type.
View source
US Food and Drug Administration
21 CFR 133.155, Mozzarella cheese and scamorza cheese
The federal standard of identity fixing mozzarella's moisture and milkfat limits.
View source
US Food and Drug Administration1993-01-06
21 CFR 133.158, Low-moisture part-skim mozzarella and scamorza cheese
The fourth of the four legally distinct mozzarellas, defined against the low-moisture standard.
View source
US Government Publishing Office2011-11-18
Public Law 112-55, Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012
Section 743, the provision behind the story that Congress made pizza a vegetable.
View source
Federal Register2012-01-26
Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs
USDA explaining that Section 743 stopped its proposed change to tomato paste crediting.
View source
USDA Agricultural Research Service2014-02
Consumption of Pizza: What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007-2010
The calorie range of a slice of cheese pizza and average pizza energy intake.
View source
USDA Agricultural Research Service2024-11
Pizza Consumption in the U.S.: What We Eat in America, NHANES 2017-March 2020 Prepandemic
Who eats pizza on a given day, at which meals, and where they buy it.
View source
International Pizza Challenge2024-09
2025 International Pizza Challenge Official Rules and Regulations
The rules of the World's Best Cheese Slice division, its prize and its blind judging.
View source
Round Table Pizza2025-09-03
Round Table Pizza Slices Up Extra Cheesy Deal for National Cheese Pizza Day
A national chain's four-day cheese pizza offer built around September 5.
View source
HathiTrust Digital Library
Full-text search for 'National Cheese Pizza Day'
One hit for the phrase across a digitised library of millions of volumes.
View source
HathiTrust Digital Library
Catalog record: Creative forecasting
A Colorado Springs monthly for activity professionals in retirement communities.
View source
Additional coverage
Pizza Today2025-09-05
National Cheese Pizza Day 2025 Falls on America's Pizza Night
The cheese-slice division's 2024 debut and its first two champions, in their own words.
View source
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension
Cheese Pizza Day
A university food calendar marking September 5 with its own crust and sauce recipes.
View source
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