CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Yes, civicrm has built in date-formatting functions.

First, I assume you're following the protocol on this page and not hacking the core templates: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Customize+Built-in+and+Profile+Screens
 
To do what you want, you would change line 17 from

{$event.event_start_date|crmDate}
to
{$event.event_start_date|date_format:"%B %d, %Y"}
or whatever formatting you want (you use the strftime formatting: http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php)

You would then find the end_date line on the same page and do the same.