January–June

• January
  • Bigod's Rebellion, an uprising by Roman Catholics against Henry VIII of England, is crushed.
  • Battle of Ollantaytambo: Emperor Manco Inca Yupanqui is victorious against the Spanish and their Indian allies led by Hernando Pizarro.
• January 6 – Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence is assassinated by Lorenzino de' Medici, a distant cousin, who claims that he wants to reintroduce republican rule but has to flee to Venice. Instead Cosimo I of the junior branch of the Medici becomes the new duke.
• March – Diego de Almagro successfully charges Manco Inca's siege of Cuzco, thereby saving his antagonists, the Pizarro brothers.
• March 12 – Recife is founded by the Portuguese, in Brazil.^[1][2]
• April – Spanish conquest of the Muisca: Bacatá, the main settlement of the Muisca Confederation, is conquered by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, effectively ending the Confederation in the Colombian Eastern Andes.^[3]
• April 1 – The Archbishop of Norway Olav Engelbrektsson flees from Trondheim to Lier, Belgium.^[4][5]
• June 2 – Pope Paul III publishes the encyclical Sublimis Deus, which declares the natives of the New World to be rational beings with souls, who must not be enslaved or robbed.^[6][7]
• June 23 – Siege of Hamar ends with the arrest of Bishop Mogens Lauritssøn, and the Catholic rebellion is definitively ended in Norway.

July–December

• July – Rodrigo Orgóñez occupies and sacks the Inca center of Vitcos but Manco Inca Yupanqui escapes and establishes the independent Neo-Inca State elsewhere in Vilcabamba, Peru.^[8]
• August 15 – Asunción is founded by Juan de Salazar de Espinosa.^[9]
• August 25 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.
• August–September – The Ottoman Empire fails to capture Corfu,^[10] but this year does conquer the islands of Paros and Ios under Hayreddin Barbarossa.^[11]
• October 15 – Following the baptism of her son, the future Edward VI of England, Jane Seymour begins suffering from puerperal fever.^[12]

• Kashmiri sultan Muhammad Shah died and he was succeeded by Shams al-Din Shah II as sultan of Kashmiri Shah Mir Sultanate in 1537.

Date unknown

• The Spaniards bring the potato to Europe.^[13]
• Kiritimati (Acea or "Christmas Island") is probably sighted by the Spanish mutineers from Hernando de Grijalva's expedition.^[14]
• Bangalore is first mentioned.^[15]
• Dissolution of the monasteries in Norway: Religious buildings dissolved by Christian III include: Bakke Abbey, Munkeby Abbey, Tautra Abbey, Nidarholm Abbey, Gimsøy Abbey and Utstein Abbey.
• Publication of complete Bible translations into English, both based on Tyndale's:
  • Myles Coverdale's 1535 text, the first to be printed in England (by James Nicholson in Southwark, London)^[16]
  • The Matthew Bible edited by John Rogers under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew" and printed in Antwerp.^[16]

Ongoing

• Dissolution of the monasteries in England: Religious buildings dissolved by Henry VIII of England include: Bisham Priory,^[17] Castle Acre Priory,^[18] Chertsey Abbey,^[19] Furness Abbey,^[20] London Charterhouse^[21][22] and Valle Crucis Abbey.