Here is a simple django template filter that will format a date according to the DATETIME_FORMAT variable in the settings file. from django import template from settings import DATETIME_FORMAT from django.template.defaultfilters import date register = template.Library() @register.filter def default_datetime(value): try: v = date(value, DATETIME_FORMAT) except: return value return v Save this in a file named default_date_filters.py and place it in a directory called templatetags in your application directory (along with a file named init.