When is Easter Sunday?

Days until Easter Sunday

The countdown uses your device’s date, so it is right in your time zone; on the day itself it says so. The calculator at the top counts the same days from today and adds the weeks, months and business days in between.

How the date is set

Easter Sunday has no fixed day of the month: it is the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, so it always falls between March 22 and April 25. The Paschal full moon is the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21, worked out from church tables that follow the real Moon closely but not exactly; the rule goes back to the Council of Nicaea in 325, and the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582 set the tables still used by Western churches.

Easter Sunday is not a federal holiday, and neither is Good Friday. Because Easter is always a Sunday, banks and post offices keep their Sunday hours; on Good Friday the New York Stock Exchange is closed while federal offices and the mail stay open, and a few states, such as Hawaii and Connecticut, give state workers the day off.

Planning around Easter Sunday

Many school districts schedule spring break around Easter, so flights and hotels for that week book up early — count back from the date above when planning. Churches hold extra services on Good Friday, the Saturday night vigil and Easter morning. Stores that close on Easter Sunday usually say so in advance, and the White House holds its Easter Egg Roll on the Monday after, a tradition since 1878.

Orthodox churches use the same rule on the older Julian calendar, so Orthodox Easter is often one to five weeks later: in 2027 it is on May 2. The two dates coincide in some years, including 2028, 2031 and 2034. Easter Monday, the day after, is a public holiday in much of Europe, in Australia and in parts of Canada, but not in the United States.

Why the date changes every year

Easter follows the Moon as well as the week, so its date moves by up to five weeks: it is March 28 in 2027 and April 16 in 2028. The Moon’s phases repeat on nearly the same calendar dates every 19 years, but the days of the week do not, so the Easter date has no short cycle: it is March 28 in 2027 and March 25 nineteen years later, in 2046. Western churches use the Gregorian tables; Orthodox churches keep the Julian ones, which is why the two Easters only sometimes agree.

The table above lists the dates from the next one on, so you can plan several years ahead — for a family trip, a school calendar or a work schedule — without working out the moon tables by hand.

To count the days to any other date, use the days between dates calculator; to find a date a number of days from now, the date calculator or 90 days from today.