Eulogy templates
Four templates you can fill in. Each one is shown twice — blank, and then completed — because a template on its own rarely tells you how much to write or what a finished section is supposed to sound like.
Last updated 8 September 2026
How to use these eulogy templates
Pick the template that matches your situation, write it out by hand or paste it into a document, and fill every bracket. Do not try to make it good on the first pass — just get something in every slot. You can make it sound like you afterwards.
All four are the same eulogy outline underneath — an opening, the memories, what they leave, a goodbye — and they differ only in how much room each part gets. A eulogy is not a biography: birth, childhood and career belong in the order of service, not in your four minutes. What the room came for is the relationships — who they were to the people sitting in it.
An order of service uses the deceased’s full name. A eulogy almost never should. Use the name you actually called them, whether you are speaking at a funeral service or at a memorial service weeks later.
One rule as you fill them in: every bracket wants a specific thing, not a quality. Not “she was generous” but “she kept a spare twenty-pound note taped inside the bread bin for whoever needed it.” Specifics are what stop a template sounding like a template.
Template 1 — the standard four-minute eulogy
The default. About 520 words spoken, roughly four minutes. Use this unless you have a reason not to.
The template
Opening — about 60 words.
[Their name] was my [relationship]. / My [relationship] was [their name].
[One specific, slightly surprising thing about them — an object, a habit, a phrase, a rule they had.]
[One sentence saying what that thing tells you about them.]
First memory — about 150 words.
[When and where. Start at the action, not the background.]
[What happened. Include one small detail nobody could guess.]
[What it showed about them.]
Second memory — about 150 words.
[A different situation that shows the same quality, so the two build rather than compete.]
[If other people have told you this story, say so — “half this room has a version of this.”]
The honest part — about 60 words.
[Something they were difficult about. A stubbornness, a grudge, a thing they could not be told.]
[Said warmly. This is what makes the rest believable.]
What they leave — about 100 words.
[Something you now do because of them.]
[Something other people are still doing because of them.]
Goodbye — about 60 words.
[Return to the object or phrase from the opening.]
[One short final sentence. Six or seven words.]
The same template, filled in
For Estelle Nwachukwu
About 500 words · roughly four minutes
My mother had a rule about the front room, and the rule was that nobody was allowed to be in it. Not us, not visitors, not on Christmas Day. It contained a three-piece suite of enormous seriousness and a carpet nobody has ever walked on.
I tell you that because it is the only thing in her entire life she was precious about, and it makes what I want to say next make sense.
In 1994 a family moved in at number 31. They had come a very long way and they had almost nothing, and I remember standing at our window with my mother watching them carry things in from a van. And my mother said, “Right,” and went and cooked an extraordinary amount of food, and took it round, and stayed four hours.
Chinelo is here today. She was eight then and she is forty now, and she called my mother “Auntie” for thirty-two years.
That was not unusual. That was Tuesday. My mother fed people constantly and with no ceremony at all — new neighbours, my friends, once a gas engineer who made the mistake of mentioning he had skipped lunch. She could not be in a room with a hungry person. It was close to a physical inability.
She was not easy. I want to say that plainly because she would spot the omission. She held grudges with real commitment, some of them for decades, at least one against a shop that had closed. She did not apologise, ever, as a matter of policy. And she was capable of a silence that could take paint off a wall.
What she leaves is a way of behaving that I have watched spread. I cook far too much. My brother cannot let a delivery driver leave without offering him something. Chinelo does it now, in her own house, to her own neighbours, and she told me on Sunday she does not remember deciding to.
The front room is still perfect. None of us can bring ourselves to sit in it.
Thank you, Mum. We are all still eating.
Template 2 — the two-minute eulogy
For when several people are speaking, or when you are not sure you can hold together for longer. One idea, one story, one ending. About 260 words.
[Their name] was my [relationship].
[One specific detail that stands for the whole person.]
[The single story. Where it happened. What was said. One detail nobody could guess.]
[What that story tells you about them — one or two sentences only.]
[The thing you are keeping, doing, or carrying because of them.]
[Short goodbye. Under ten words.]
Writing a eulogy when more than one person is speaking
Agree who is taking which story before the day rather than on the morning. Two people telling the same holiday anecdote is the commonest thing that goes wrong when a family shares the speaking, and the second person has to improvise at the worst possible moment.
If you are speaking on behalf of several people rather than alongside them, template 4 below is the one you want.
Everything you are tempted to add to this — a second story, their job history, a list of relatives, a poem — should stay out. The compression is the point, and it is what makes short eulogies land.
Template 3 — celebration of life
For a less formal service, often weeks after the death, frequently not in a church. The register is warmer and more social, and the room expects to laugh at least once.
[Welcome people and say who you are — this service usually has no officiant to do it.]
[Why we are here today, in their language rather than funeral language.]
[The funny thing. Something affectionately ridiculous they did, told properly.]
[Turn: the same trait, seen seriously. What that ridiculousness was actually made of.]
[What they built or held together — friendships, a family, a team, a street.]
[Invite the room in: ask people to tell each other stories afterwards, or raise a glass.]
[Short goodbye, in their idiom.]
The turn in the middle is what makes this work. A celebration of life that is only funny leaves people oddly unsatisfied; the laugh needs to open into something true.
Template 4 — speaking for the family
When you are the one who can hold it together, delivering on behalf of people who cannot. Different job: you are a voice, not a mourner, and your own feelings stay mostly out of it.
[Who you are and who you are speaking for — “I’m speaking today for [name] and the children.”]
[One memory from their partner, credited: “[Name] wanted me to tell you about…”]
[One memory from a child or grandchild, credited, and kept in their words if you can.]
[One memory of your own, short, so the room hears you are in it too.]
[Thank people for coming and for what they have done this week.]
[Goodbye on behalf of everyone.]
Ask each person for one specific moment rather than “what should I say about him.” The narrow question gets a usable answer; the broad one gets “he was a wonderful man,” which you cannot use.
A printable eulogy template you can fill in by hand
Some people write better on paper, especially at a kitchen table at one in the morning. This is the standard template above, set out with room to write and at a size you can read from a lectern.
Download the blank eulogy template (PDF, one page) — free, and no email required.
A template cannot know anything about your loved one, which is why every one of these leaves the specifics to you. The blanks are the part that matters; everything else is just the order they go in.
What makes a good eulogy, whatever template you use
- Read it aloud before you decide it is finished. Anything that sounds written rather than spoken will announce itself immediately.
- Replace every adjective with an example. “Generous” becomes the twenty-pound note in the bread bin.
- Break the structure once. A very short paragraph, or a sentence out of order, keeps it from marching. In the worked example above, “That was Tuesday” does that job.
- Cut the joins. Phrases like “I would also like to mention” are template scaffolding showing through. Delete them and let the paragraphs sit next to each other.
- Keep one thing that is slightly odd. The unlabelled jars of screws, the carpet nobody walked on. Perfect is forgettable; odd is true.
Where personal stories go
In the middle, and nowhere else. Personal stories are the only part of a eulogy nobody else could have written, so they take the largest share of the words. Keep the ones that are load-bearing — each there to show something — and cut the ones that are only there to fill a minute.
Practical tips for delivering it on the day
Your audience already knows they are sad. You are not there to remind them, which is why the tone of a eulogy can sit much closer to ordinary speech than people expect.
- Print at 16 to 18 point. A large font is the difference between reading and searching.
- Mark two places to stop and take a couple of deep breaths.
- Look up at the end of each story, not each sentence — eye contact in three places is enough.
How to deliver a eulogy covers the rest of it, including what to do if your voice goes.
Eulogy examples and further reading
Eulogy outline is a working outline you fill in section by section, with a word count for each. Eulogy format covers the physical pages — type size, spacing, and marking up your breaths. Eulogy structure compares six different shapes and says where each one fails. How to write a eulogy walks through the whole thing in six steps, from a blank page to something you can say out loud. Eulogy examples has six complete eulogies in different voices and lengths. Eulogy examples for a father has complete eulogy speeches for a dad, if that is who you are writing for. Our eulogy writer fills a template in for you if you would rather answer questions than face the blanks.