Days until New Year

Days until New Year

The countdown counts whole days from your device’s date to the next January 1, so it changes at your local midnight, not at midnight in New York or in UTC. On New Year’s Day itself it says so. The calculator at the top counts the same days and adds the weeks and business days in between, which helps with year-end deadlines.

January 1, every year

New Year’s Day has a fixed date, so only the weekday moves: one day later each year, two after February 29. January 1, 2027 is a Friday, which makes New Year’s Eve a Thursday night and gives a three-day weekend. New Year’s Day is one of the legal public holidays in 5 U.S.C. § 6103: federal offices, post offices and banks close, and so do the stock markets.

When a federal holiday falls on a Saturday, most federal employees get the Friday before off; when it falls on a Sunday, the Monday after. January 1, 2028 is a Saturday, so the federal holiday is observed on Friday, December 31, 2027 — in the old year. New Year’s Eve, December 31, is not a federal holiday on its own, and markets and banks usually keep regular or shortened hours that day.

Counting down by time zone

The new year arrives at local midnight, so it reaches the eastern United States three hours before the West Coast, and Alaska and Hawaii later still: midnight in New York is 9:00 p.m. in Los Angeles. Countdown clocks on TV follow the time zone of the broadcast, which is why a New York broadcast and your own clock may disagree if you live farther west. For a countdown in hours rather than days, the time duration calculator gives the hours between now and midnight.

Year-end planning

Many deadlines fall on December 31 — tax-year moves, flexible spending accounts, benefit enrollments — so the days left are worth checking well before the holidays take over. To count to any date, use the days between dates calculator; to find a date a set number of days ahead, the date calculator or 90 days from today.