How long until Easter?

Easter — the movable feast

Easter is the most prominent "movable feast" on the Christian calendar — it doesn't fall on a fixed date. The Western Christian Easter is computed as the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21. The earliest possible Easter is March 22; the latest is April 25. The clock above targets the next Easter Sunday in your local timezone.

If you want a fixed-date holiday countdown, our Christmas page targets December 25 every year; New Year targets January 1.

How Easter is computed (the computus)

The calculation is called the computus paschalis — the Paschal computation. The version most software uses is the Anonymous Gregorian algorithm, published in the 19th century: it produces the date by combining the year's number with the Metonic 19-year lunar cycle, then adjusting for the Gregorian calendar's leap-year rules.

The version on this page (in src/lib/easter.ts, if you're poking around the source) matches the standard algorithm exactly. Eastern Orthodox churches following the Julian calendar use a different computation; their Easter often falls a few weeks later than the Western one.

The earliest and latest Easters

In modern times, the earliest Easters have fallen on March 22 (last in 1818, next in 2285). The latest Easters fall on April 25 (last in 1943, next in 2038). Most years it lands somewhere in the early-to-mid April range. The card on this page surfaces the exact date for the next Easter, computed each load.

Holy Week and the Easter triduum

In Western Christian observance, Easter Sunday is preceded by Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday. The Easter Triduum spans Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday itself — four overlapping liturgical days that mark the most sacred period of the Christian year. Good Friday is a public holiday in most Christian-tradition countries; Easter Monday is a public holiday in much of Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

If you want a countdown to the Friday before Easter (Good Friday), our how-long-until tool accepts an arbitrary date.

Easter and the calendar reform

One reason Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582 was to lock the date of the spring equinox — and therefore Easter — close to where it had been at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Without the reform, the Julian calendar's drift would have pushed Easter steadily later in the solar year over the centuries.

Today the Gregorian reform is universal in civil calendars, but Eastern Orthodox churches kept the Julian computation for Easter — which is why "Orthodox Easter" usually falls a few weeks after Western Easter.

Sharing the Easter countdown

Bookmark this page once. The Easter computation runs on every load, so the count is always pointed at the correct next Easter Sunday in your local timezone. Share the URL with anyone and they see the same countdown computed in their own timezone, with no offset arithmetic required.

The whole page is a few kilobytes of HTML and CSS plus a small piece of JavaScript for the live tick. Once the page has loaded, the clock keeps ticking using only your device's clock, so it works fine in airplane mode or on a flaky connection.

Lent and the wider Easter season

Lent runs for 40 days before Easter, traditionally beginning on Ash Wednesday. The 40-day count excludes the six Sundays in the period, which is why Ash Wednesday falls 46 calendar days before Easter Sunday. If you'd like a countdown to Lent rather than to Easter itself, take the Easter date from the card on this page, subtract 46 days, and enter the result into our how-long-until tool.

Pentecost falls 49 days after Easter Sunday and is also a movable feast. Trinity Sunday is the Sunday after Pentecost; Corpus Christi is the Thursday after that. Each can be derived from Easter by adding a fixed offset and entering the result into the same tool.

Easter and the other holiday clocks

Easter is the most algorithmically interesting holiday on the site. For fixed-date holidays, our Christmas countdown targets December 25 every year, our Halloween countdown targets October 31, and our New Year countdown targets January 1. For other movable feasts like Mardi Gras, which falls 47 days before Easter, or Pentecost, which falls 49 days after, the cleanest option is our how-long-until tool: take the next-Easter date from the card on this page, add or subtract the offset, and paste the target into the picker.

For Good Friday and Easter Monday, the same tool works. Good Friday is two days before Easter; Easter Monday is the day after. Both are public holidays in many countries.

Calendar curiosities around the date

Because Easter is anchored to a lunar event, the gap between two consecutive Easters is usually around 354 days, the length of a lunar year, rather than the 365 days of a solar year. That's why Easter creeps backwards through April most of the time, then jumps forward when an extra lunar month is added. Over a 19-year cycle, the dates roughly repeat, which is the basis of the Metonic cycle used in the computus.

Our age calculator handles the calendar transitions correctly for birthdays that fall near Easter, where the date can shift across a leap year boundary.