Pandoc: Markdown to PDF without page numbers

Based off the answer here, you can disable pagenumbering simply by inserting the following LaTeX command at the beginning of your document, or in the YAML front-matter:

\pagenumbering{gobble}

Just use your template as described here:

PDF with numbered sections and a custom LaTeX header:

pandoc -N                                         \
  --template=mytemplate.tex                       \
  --variable mainfont=Georgia                     \
  --variable sansfont=Arial                       \
  --variable monofont="Bitstream Vera Sans Mono"  \
  --variable fontsize=12pt                        \
  --variable version=1.10                         \
  README                                          \
  --latex-engine=xelatex                          \
  --toc                                           \
  -o example14.pdf

You can look at the default (builtin) LaTeX template Pandoc is using:

pandoc -D latex | less

You'll discover that this template uses a variable named $pagestyle$. Searchengining for 'latex pagestyle' led me to conclude that a pagestyle named 'empty' may achieve what you want. So I ran this command:

pandoc               \
  -f html            \
  -o fsf.pdf         \
  -V pagestyle=empty \
     https://www.fsf.org

creates a PDF without page numbering... so I thought! When testing however, I found that the first page unfortunately still had a "1" at its bottom! The rest didn't...

So the next stage would be the following:

1. Save the default LaTeX template of Pandoc into a file:

   pandoc -D latex > latex-pandoc.template
   

2. Use your editor of choice to hack the template so the first page looses its page numbering too. (I do not currently know how this can be achieved in LaTeX -- would have to google it myself....) The result is latex-hacked.template.

3. Now apply this template when creating your output:

   pandoc -f html             \
          -o fsf.pdf          \
          -V pagestyle=empty  \
          --template=latex-hacked.template \
            https://www.fsf.org
   

---

(Maybe there is another choice of pagestyle which avoids the first page numbering? Maybe it is a bug in the definition of the empty pagestyle in LaTeX? I'm sure one of the friendly members of the TeXExchange community will soon chime in and improve my answer if I'm wrong...)