When a BAND group's calendar stops updating — or never shows up in Google Calendar at all — it's almost always one of a handful of things, and only some of them are genuinely broken. BAND is a general group-messaging app that youth teams repurpose for schedules, and it has two calendar features that sound alike and do opposite things, which is where a lot of these start. Here's the checklist in the order worth checking.
Nothing is broken — your calendar app hasn't re-read the feed yet
Rule this out first, because it's the usual answer. Google Calendar refreshes subscribed links on its own lazy cycle — typically every 12 to 24 hours, sometimes longer — and iPhones do the same thing just as quietly. There's no button to force it and no setting to change it. If somebody moved a practice in the BAND group this morning and your calendar still shows the old time, open BAND itself: if the new time is posted there, the export is working and you're waiting on Google or Apple.
You used Subscribe via URL, which points the other way
This is the BAND-specific trap, and it's easy to hit because the two options sound almost identical. Subscribe via URL pulls an outside calendar into BAND for the group to see — it sends nothing out, so nothing will ever appear in Google Calendar or on your phone. The one you want is Export Band Calendars: Calendar tab → Manage Events → Export Band Calendars → copy the URL. It's available to every member of the group, not just admins.
You exported a different calendar than the one the events are posted to
Some BAND groups run separate calendars for different sub-teams or age groups, and the list under Export Band Calendars will show all of them. If you took the group's default calendar and your child's events live on a sub-team calendar, you'll get a feed that works perfectly and carries none of the games you're looking for. Go back to Export Band Calendars and check which one you copied. Worth checking too whether the schedule is actually being posted in a different BAND group entirely — the export only covers the group you took it from.
You imported a file, or the calendar is switched off where you're looking
A downloaded calendar file is a one-time snapshot: it will sit there unchanged forever no matter what gets posted in BAND. Only a subscribed URL keeps updating. The other half of this is simpler still — in Google Calendar a subscribed calendar can sit unticked in the left sidebar, and on an iPhone it can be hidden in the calendar list, so the events exist and just aren't drawn. Check the tick box before you re-add anything. If you do need to re-add it, remember that the Google Calendar phone app can't add a calendar from a URL at all; that step has to happen at calendar.google.com in a browser, and if Google rejects a webcal:// link, change webcal:// to https:// and try again.
It is syncing — it just doesn't look like the schedule you expected
BAND is a general-purpose group app, so the exported feed carries everything the group posts: practices and games, but also team dinners, fundraiser deadlines, and BAND's own automatic anniversary entries like “The Band was created 1 year(s) ago on this day.” Nothing is broken, and Google gives you no way to filter individual events out of a subscribed feed. Schedule Caddie strips the anniversary entries automatically when it imports a BAND feed, so they never reach your calendar.
A full day. Google and Apple re-read subscribed calendars roughly every 12 to 24 hours, occasionally longer, and neither gives you a way to force it. If a change you can see posted in BAND still hasn't reached your calendar after 24 hours, then start working through the causes above.
They move data in opposite directions. Subscribe via URL pulls an outside calendar (like a school calendar) into BAND for the group to see. Export Band Calendars does the reverse — it hands BAND's own events out as a link you can subscribe to elsewhere. Only the export one will ever put BAND events in Google Calendar or on your iPhone.
No. Export Band Calendars is available to any member of the group, not just admins or managers.
Nothing is broken — BAND adds anniversary events to the group calendar automatically, and the export carries them along with the real games and practices. Google has no per-event filter for subscribed feeds, so there's no way to hide them there. Schedule Caddie filters them out on import, so what lands on your calendar is only the real schedule.
There's no refresh button for a subscribed calendar. The only real workaround is to remove the subscription and add the same exported link again, which pulls a fresh copy immediately — a blunt instrument rather than a fix.
Not by your calendar app — subscribed calendars update silently, so you'd be back to watching the group chat to catch changes. Schedule Caddie checks the same exported BAND feed every hour and emails you exactly what changed: new time, old time, which group. It's free, and it merges every kid and every app into one calendar.
Every kid, every schedule, every app — merged, color-coded, and watched for changes.
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Team apps, school calendars, and paper schedules — merged, color-coded, change-alerted.