Can I export my Facebook calendar events to iCal?

Facebook does have a nice event management area where you can see all the events that you're involved with (assuming you don't just automatically say "no" to every event invitation because almost all of them are poorly disguised marketing pitches) but you're right, it'd be darn nice to have them show up on your existing calendar.

Turns out you can. Sort of. What you can do is export all your events and import them into iCal, but you can't "subscribe" to the event calendar so that it automatically updates your iCal events as you receive and respond to new Facebook events. (or if you can, I sure haven't been able to figure out how to accomplish that)

To export events, start by going to Facebook and clicking on 'Events' on the left side. Now you'll see a long list of events to which you're invited and/or have RSVP'd "yes" or "maybe". Now, scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see:

As I've highlighted, click on "Export Events". It shows you a complicated URL that will let you grab an importable version of your event calendar:

Click on the URL in the window on your screen and it brings iCal to the fore, asking what calendar you'd like to use for the imported events:

Rather than use an existing calendar, I prefer to create a new iCal calendar that's just for Facebook events, so I'll choose "New Calendar":

Click "OK" and just a few short seconds later you'll see the events show up on your iCal calendar and a new calendar identified on the left side that's tied to your Facebook account ID:

That's ugly, so Ctrl-click on it to pull up the contextual menu in iCal:

Choose "Get Info" and you'll see you can tweak the color of these events and rename the calendar:

Make the changes you want, click "OK" and you're good to go.

Now, if anyone can share a tip on how to subscribe to Facebook Events in iCal, rather than just export a snapshot, that'd be a great addition and I'd love to hear about it!