Easter Date Calculator

Easter moves, and almost nobody can say why. It is the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or after 21 March — a rule about a calendar of the moon that the Church keeps on paper rather than about the moon itself. That rule is arithmetic, so this works the date out rather than looking it up, for any year between 1600 and 2400, along with everything that hangs off it from Pancake Day to Pentecost.

Year

Any year from 1600 to 2400. Every date is computed, not looked up.

The dates will appear here.

What this generator does

Computes Easter Sunday for any year from 1600 to 2400 using the standard Gregorian computus, and derives the moveable feasts that are defined relative to it: Shrove Tuesday 47 days before, Ash Wednesday 46 before, Mothering Sunday 21 before, Palm Sunday 7 before, Good Friday 2 before, Easter Monday the day after, Ascension Day 39 after and Pentecost 49 after. It also computes Orthodox Easter, which follows the same rule on the Julian calendar and so usually lands on a different Sunday. Nothing is read from a table, which is what makes it right for years no published table covers.

How to use this tool

Enter the year you want.
Press Work out the dates.
Read Easter Sunday, the Orthodox date, and the ten dates anchored to it.
Each row shows the rule that produced it, so you can check the working.

Understanding the controls

Year: Anything from 1600 to 2400. The range is not a limit of the arithmetic, which works for any Gregorian year, but of the calendar: Britain did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, so dates before then are what the rule gives rather than what was observed at the time.

Worked examples

2026: Easter Sunday 5 April; Orthodox Easter 12 April, a week later.
2027: Easter Sunday 28 March — early, because the full moon falls soon after 21 March.
2038: 25 April, the latest date Easter can ever fall.
The spread: Easter can fall on any of 35 days, from 22 March to 25 April.

Common use cases

Finding Easter for a year that is too far ahead for the calendar on the wall
Planning term dates, holidays or events around a moveable feast
Working out Pancake Day, Good Friday or Ascension Day from Easter
Explaining to a class why Easter moves and Christmas does not
Checking when Orthodox Easter falls, and how far apart the two are that year

How this generator works

The date comes from the Meeus/Jones/Butcher algorithm, the standard anonymous computus published in Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms. It is exact rather than approximate, and every step is integer arithmetic on the year: the year's position in the 19-year Metonic cycle is found, the century is separated from the year within it so the Gregorian leap-year and lunar corrections can be applied, and from those the ecclesiastical full moon is reconstructed and the following Sunday taken. The result is always a Sunday and always falls between 22 March and 25 April, which this implementation is tested against for all 801 years in range, alongside the published dates for 1900, 2000 and every year from 2020 to 2038. Orthodox Easter is computed by the same reasoning on the Julian calendar and then converted forward; the conversion is not a fixed 13 days but grows by a day each time the Julian calendar keeps a leap year the Gregorian one drops, so it is derived from the century rather than hard-coded.

Randomness and fairness

Nothing here is random. Every date is computed from the year by a fixed rule, so the same year always gives the same answer — which is the whole point of the tool and the reason it can be checked against published dates.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

Dates are given in the Gregorian calendar, which is what almost every country uses civilly.
The moveable feasts are the standard Western offsets from Easter Sunday.

Limitations and good to know

It computes the ecclesiastical Easter, which is what the churches and the calendar use. That is deliberately not the astronomical full moon — the Church's lunar calendar is a fixed 19-year cycle kept on paper, so the two can differ by a day or two.
Dates before 1752 are what the Gregorian rule gives, not what was used in Britain at the time, which was still on the Julian calendar until then.
Orthodox Easter is the common Julian-reckoned date. A few churches use other reckonings and will differ.
It gives dates, not observances. Whether a date is a public holiday where you are is a separate question with a different answer in every country.
The range stops at 2400. The arithmetic would keep going, but a date eight centuries out is a curiosity rather than a plan.

Common mistakes

Expecting Easter to track the real full moon: It tracks the ecclesiastical one, which is a fixed cycle written down centuries ago rather than an observation. They usually agree and occasionally do not, and when they differ the calendar wins.
Assuming Orthodox Easter is always a week later: It varies. Some years the two coincide exactly, and in others the gap is up to five weeks. The tool shows the gap for the year you asked about.
Counting Mothering Sunday as Mother's Day: In the UK, Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Lent and so moves with Easter. In the US, Mother's Day is the second Sunday of May and does not.

Practical tips

If you are planning around a school term, check Easter first — in most of the UK the spring holiday is pinned to it, so the whole term shifts by up to a month year to year.
Shrove Tuesday is always 47 days before Easter, so a pancake evening is easy to place once you have the Easter date.
For anything involving both calendars, check the Orthodox gap for that specific year rather than assuming last year's.

Troubleshooting

The date disagrees with a calendar I have: Check whether that calendar is showing the Orthodox date, which this also computes. If it is a Western calendar and it still disagrees, check the year — the dates for adjacent years look similar and are easy to misread.
I need a year outside the range: The range runs from 1600 to 2400. Before 1600 the Gregorian calendar was barely in use; after 2400 the answer is arithmetic rather than anything anyone will plan around.

Privacy and your data

Nothing is entered but a year, and nothing is stored. The calculation happens in your browser, no date is written into the page address, and analytics records only that the tool ran.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Easter move when Christmas does not?: Christmas is a fixed date, 25 December. Easter is defined by a rule that combines a solar date, a lunar cycle and a day of the week: the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or after 21 March. Because the lunar month and the solar year do not divide evenly, that combination lands anywhere in a 35-day window from 22 March to 25 April.
How is the date actually calculated?: By the Gregorian computus — specifically the Meeus/Jones/Butcher algorithm, which is exact rather than approximate. It works out where the year sits in the 19-year Metonic cycle that the Church's lunar calendar repeats on, applies the Gregorian corrections for leap years and for the drift of that lunar cycle, reconstructs the ecclesiastical full moon, and takes the Sunday after it. No table is consulted at any point.
What are the earliest and latest Easter can be?: 22 March and 25 April. Both are rare — the next 25 April is 2038 — and the range of 35 possible dates is fixed by the rule rather than by observation.
Why is Orthodox Easter different?: The rule is the same, but it is applied on the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian one. The two calendars have drifted apart by 13 days, and the lunar cycles they use have drifted too, so the resulting Sunday is often different. Some years they coincide; in others Orthodox Easter is up to five weeks later.