1561

January–June

• January 31 - The Edict of Orleans suspends the persecution of the Huguenots in France.
• March 1 - Kingston Grammar School is founded in England.
• April 14 - The citizens of Nuremberg see what appears to be an aerial battle, followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and a large crash outside the city. A news notice is printed on April 14, describing the event.
• May 8 - Madrid is declared the capital of Spain, by Philip II.
• June 4 - Old St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London is badly damaged by fire, and the spire is destroyed after being struck by lightning. The spire is not rebuilt.
• June 4 - The nobility of Harrien-Wierland and the town of Reval of the Livonian Order swear allegiance to Sweden.
• June 25 - Francis Coxe, an English astrologer, is pilloried at Cheapside in London, and makes a public confession of his involvement in "sinistral and artes".
• June 29 - Erik XIV is crowned King of Sweden.

  July–December

• July - Arauco War: The hated encomendero Pedro de Avendaño and two other Spaniards are killed, triggering the Second Great Rebellion of the Mapuche.
• July 12 - Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is finished.
• August - English merchant Anthony Jenkinson arrives in Moscow on his second expedition to the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
• August 19 - Mary, Queen of Scots, is denied passage through England after returning from France. She arrives at Leith, Scotland on August 19.
• September - Protestant reformer John Knox has a three-day debate in Maybole, Ayrshire, Scotland with Quintin Kennedy, commendator of Crossraguel Abbey, on transubstantiation. The result is inconclusive, but Kennedy is fighting a losing battle against the Reformation, which had been confirmed by the Scottish government in 1560.
• October 18 - Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima: Takeda Shingen defeats Uesugi Kenshin, in the of their ongoing conflicts.
• November 28 - Treaty of Vilnius was concluded during the Livonian War, between the Livonian Confederation and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. With the treaty, the non-Danish and non-Swedish part of Livonia, with the exception of the Free imperial city of Riga, subjected itself to Polish king and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus with the Pacta subiectionis . In turn, Sigismund granted protection from the Tsardom of Russia and confirmed the Livonian estates' traditional privileges, laid out in the Privilegium Sigismundi Augusti.

  Date unknown

• The first Calvinists settle in England, after fleeing Flanders.
• The Anglo-Genevan metrical psalter is published, including the Old 100th, the version of the hymn All People That on Earth Do Dwell made from Psalm 100, attributed to the probably-Scottish clergyman and biblical translator William Kethe, exiled in Geneva.
• Ruy López de Segura develops modern techniques of chess playing in Spain.
• William Baldwin's Beware the Cat, an early example of extended fiction in English, is published anonymously in London. This edition appears to have been suppressed, and no copies survive.
• Between 1561 and 1670, 3,229 alleged witches are executed in southwestern Germany, most by burning.