Easter Dates Table
| Year | Easter Sunday | Ash Wednesday | Good Friday | Pentecost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | April 5 | February 18 | April 3 | May 24 |
| 2027 | March 28 | February 10 | March 26 | May 16 |
| 2028 | April 16 | March 1 | April 14 | June 4 |
| 2029 | April 1 | February 14 | March 30 | May 20 |
| 2030 | April 21 | March 6 | April 19 | June 9 |
| 2031 | April 13 | February 26 | April 11 | June 1 |
| 2032 | March 28 | February 11 | March 26 | May 16 |
| 2033 | April 17 | March 2 | April 15 | June 5 |
| 2034 | April 9 | February 22 | April 7 | May 28 |
| 2035 | March 25 | February 7 | March 23 | May 13 |
| 2036 | April 13 | February 27 | April 11 | June 1 |
| 2037 | April 5 | February 18 | April 3 | May 24 |
| 2038 | April 25 | March 10 | April 23 | June 13 |
| 2039 | April 10 | February 23 | April 8 | May 29 |
| 2040 | April 1 | February 15 | March 30 | May 20 |
Easter is the movable feast that drags half the calendar with it - Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Pentecost all hang off its date, and school holidays, bank holidays and tax years bend around it. The table below runs Easter Sunday from 2026 to 2040 with its four attached days, computed by the exact algorithm the churches use and cross-checked against the UK government's published holiday data, which pins Good Friday: April 3 in 2026, March 26 in 2027.
The rule is ancient and astronomical: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox, fixed by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Because it depends on a moon-and-sunday combination rather than a calendar slot, the date ranges from March 22 to April 25 - and the year-to-year swing is violent by holiday standards, nearly a month between 2027's early March Easter and 2028's mid-April one.
How to use
- Find any year's row for Easter Sunday, then read its attached days: Ash Wednesday opens Lent 46 days back, Good Friday sits 2 days before, Pentecost lands 49 days after.
- Type a year in the tool for any date 2026 to 2100 - the full computus, not a stored table.
- Planning school breaks or travel? The date can move almost a month year to year - check the next row before assuming a pattern.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Easter move every year?
The Council of Nicaea fixed it in 325 AD: the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. It is a moon-and-weekday rule, not a date - the church uses its own ecclesiastical moon (a 19-year cycle) and its own equinox (pinned to March 21), so the computed date can differ from the real sky by a day or two but is always the same for every Western church.
What are the earliest and latest possible Easters?
March 22 and April 25 - a 35-day window. March 22 Easters are rare (last 1818, next 2285) and April 25 nearly as rare; most years land in the comfortable middle of the window. 2027's March 28 is on the early side, which is why its school holidays feel oddly close to February half-term.
Why is Orthodox Easter usually on a different date?
Eastern Orthodox churches run the same Nicaea rule on the old Julian calendar: their equinox and moon tables sit 13 days behind, so their Easter typically lands a week or more after the Western date - occasionally the same day, most famously overlapping in 2025. The table here is the Western (Gregorian) date used across most of Europe and the Americas.
Why is Ash Wednesday 46 days before Easter?
Lent runs 40 days, mirroring the forty days of the wilderness - but Sundays do not count as fast days, so the church adds the six Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter back into the arithmetic: 46 calendar days, 40 fasting days. Good Friday is day -2 because it is two days before Easter Sunday by definition, and Pentecost is Easter +49, closing the 50-day Easter season.
Who works out these dates - can they change?
The algorithm is fixed mathematics (the standard version is credited to Meeus, Jones and Butcher) and every computer, including this page, computes the same answer. A reform to fix Easter to a specific April Sunday has been discussed for decades - the World Council of Churches proposed one in 1997 - but the churches never adopted it, so the computus stands as the longest-running piece of production code in Western civilization.