When is Easter? For any year you like.
Easter moves because it follows the moon, and everything else in the season follows Easter. Type a year and get the whole calendar — Lent, Holy Week, Ascension, Pentecost, Advent — plus the Orthodox date beside it.
When is Easter — and everything that hangs off it?
Easter moves; every other date in the season is a fixed offset from it. Pick any year from 1900 to 2199.
Easter Sunday 2026
April 5
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Orthodox Pascha 2026
April 12
7 days later, on the Julian reckoning.
| Day | Date |
|---|---|
Epiphany Fixed at 6 January — the visit of the magi, and the revealing of Christ to the nations. | Tue, Jan 6 |
Ash Wednesday 46 days before Easter: the 40 days of Lent plus six Sundays, which were never counted as fast days. | Wed, Feb 18 |
First Sunday of Lent The first Sunday after Ash Wednesday, traditionally marking Jesus's 40 days of temptation in the wilderness. | Sun, Feb 22 |
Palm Sunday The Sunday before Easter — the entry into Jerusalem, and the start of Holy Week. | Sun, Mar 29 |
Maundy Thursday The Last Supper. 'Maundy' comes from mandatum — the new commandment given that night. | Thu, Apr 2 |
Good Friday The crucifixion. Kept as a fast in almost every tradition that keeps Lent at all. | Fri, Apr 3 |
Holy Saturday The silent day between the cross and the resurrection — the Easter Vigil begins after nightfall. | Sat, Apr 4 |
Easter Sunday The first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after 21 March. Everything moveable hangs off this date. | Sun, Apr 5 |
Orthodox Easter (Pascha) The same rule computed on the Julian calendar, which now runs 13 days behind — so the dates often differ, and occasionally coincide. | Sun, Apr 12 |
Ascension Day 39 days after Easter — Acts 1 records 40 days of appearances, counting Easter itself as the first. | Thu, May 14 |
Pentecost 49 days after Easter. 'Pentecost' means fiftieth, counting inclusively from Easter Day. | Sun, May 24 |
Trinity Sunday The Sunday after Pentecost, closing the narrative half of the church year. | Sun, May 31 |
First Sunday of Advent The fourth Sunday before Christmas — and the start of the church's year, not its end. | Sun, Nov 29 |
Christmas Day Fixed at 25 December in the Western calendar since at least the fourth century. | Fri, Dec 25 |
The rule
Why Easter moves, when almost nothing else does
Christmas is fixed at 25 December and stays there. Easter wanders across five weeks of spring, and the reason is that it was never anchored to a solar date in the first place. The crucifixion happened at Passover, and Passover is set by the moon — the 14th day of Nisan in a lunar calendar. Easter inherited that lunar anchor and has kept it for seventeen centuries.
The rule the Council of Nicaea settled on in AD 325 is deceptively simple: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March. The complication is that "full moon" here doesn't mean the actual astronomical one. It means the *ecclesiastical* full moon, calculated from tables designed to keep the date computable centuries in advance without an observatory — which is why Easter occasionally lands a week away from where the sky would put it.
Working that out by hand is genuinely difficult, and it acquired its own name: the computus. For most of the medieval period, calculating Easter was one of the more demanding pieces of mathematics a monastery did, and getting it wrong meant a whole region kept the central feast of the faith on the wrong day. This page runs the standard closed-form solution instantly, for any year you type in.
What the calculator shows
One date unlocks the entire season
Every moveable feast is a fixed offset from Easter, so finding it once gives you the whole calendar.
The full moveable cycle
Ash Wednesday, the first Sunday of Lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday — each with a line on where the date comes from.
The Orthodox date beside it
Most Orthodox churches apply the same rule on the Julian calendar, which now runs 13 days behind. Usually the dates differ; sometimes — as in 2025 and 2028 — they land on exactly the same Sunday.
Any year, and a live countdown
Type any year from 1900 to 2199. If it's still ahead of you, the tool shows how many days remain — useful for planning a Lent, a baptism, or a church calendar a year out.
The detail that confuses everyone
Why Lent is 40 days but Ash Wednesday is 46 days before Easter
Count the days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday and you get 46, not 40 — which looks like an error until you know what's being counted. Sundays were never fast days. Every Sunday is a commemoration of the resurrection, and the early church would not fast on the day it celebrated, so the six Sundays inside Lent were simply excluded from the count. Forty fast days plus six feast Sundays equals forty-six.
The number forty itself is doing deliberate work. It's the length of the flood, of Moses on Sinai, of Israel in the wilderness, and of Jesus's temptation before he began his ministry — Scripture's standard span for a period of testing that ends in something new. Lent puts believers inside that pattern rather than merely reading about it.
The same kind of inclusive counting explains Pentecost. It lands 49 days after Easter by subtraction, but its name means "fiftieth" — because the ancient practice counted the starting day itself as day one. Ascension works the same way: Acts records forty days of appearances, which puts it 39 days after Easter on a modern calendar. The maths isn't wrong; the counting convention is just older than ours.
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Questions people ask
About the easter date calculator
How is the date of Easter calculated?+
Easter is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon falling on or after 21 March, a rule settled at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. The "ecclesiastical" full moon comes from calculation tables rather than observation, which keeps the date computable centuries ahead but means it can occasionally differ from the astronomical full moon by a day or two.
Why does Easter change every year?+
Because it's tied to the moon rather than the sun. The crucifixion took place at Passover, which is set by a lunar calendar, and Easter kept that anchor. As a result it can fall anywhere between 22 March and 25 April in the Western calendar — a five-week window.
Why is Orthodox Easter on a different date?+
Most Orthodox churches apply the same Nicene rule but compute it on the Julian calendar, which currently runs 13 days behind the Gregorian one. That usually produces a later date — sometimes by a week, sometimes by more than a month — though the two occasionally coincide, as they did in 2025.
Why is Ash Wednesday 46 days before Easter if Lent is 40 days?+
Because Sundays aren't counted. Every Sunday commemorates the resurrection, so the early church didn't fast on them, and the six Sundays inside Lent were excluded from the forty. Forty fast days plus six Sundays gives the 46-day gap.
How do you work out Pentecost and Ascension Day?+
Both are fixed offsets from Easter. Ascension is 39 days after Easter Sunday — Acts describes forty days of appearances, counting Easter itself as the first. Pentecost is 49 days after, and its name means "fiftieth" for the same inclusive-counting reason. Trinity Sunday follows a week after Pentecost.
What are the earliest and latest dates Easter can fall?+
In the Western calendar, 22 March at the earliest and 25 April at the latest. Both extremes are rare — 22 March last occurred in 1818 and won't recur until 2285, while 25 April happens somewhat more often, most recently in 1943 and next in 2038, which you can check in the calculator above.
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