The countdown follows Western (Gregorian) Easter. The Orthodox date, often a later Sunday, is listed in the dates table.
How many days until Easter: 2027 to 2031
Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21 (ecclesiastical rule). It is always a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, so the date changes every year.
Year
Date
Orthodox Easter
Days away
2027
Sunday, May 2
154 days
2028
Same Sunday
539 days
2029
Sunday, April 8
889 days
2030
Sunday, April 28
1,274 days
2031
Same Sunday
1,631 days
How is the date of Easter set?
Easter Day is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21 (ecclesiastical rule). The Book of Common Prayer states the rule in four parts:
Step
Rule
1
Start from March 21, the church’s fixed date for the spring equinox
2
Find the first church full moon on or after that date, which falls between March 21 and April 18
3
Easter is the Sunday after that full moon
4
If the full moon falls on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday
The full moon here comes from church tables, not from a telescope, and the fixed March 21 can differ from the astronomical equinox. That is why the first day of spring countdown and Easter run on separate dates. This page calculates each Easter with the Anonymous Gregorian algorithm published by Jean Meeus in Astronomical Algorithms; it returns the published dates, such as April 20, 2025, and April 5, 2026.
Earliest and latest Easter: March 22 to April 25
The earliest Easter comes when the church full moon falls on Saturday, March 21. The latest comes when it falls on Sunday, April 18, which pushes Easter a full week to April 25. Both extremes are rare. The last March 22 Easter was in 1818, and the next is in 2285; April 25 last came in 1943 and comes next in 2038.
Because the date swings by up to five weeks, one Easter can be more than a year from the next. Between 1900 and 2099, the gap runs from 350 to 385 days, so on the Monday after an early Easter, this countdown can show as many as 384 days.
Orthodox Easter dates
Most Orthodox churches still calculate Easter with the Julian calendar. The Catechism of the Catholic Church records that the churches agreed on the Easter rule at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The Gregorian reform of 1582 then opened a gap of several days between the Western and Eastern calendars. Today that gap is 13 days, and the two Easters land on the same Sunday in some years, such as 2028 and 2031, and up to five weeks apart in others.
The dates table on this page puts the Orthodox date beside each of the next five Western Easters. Both are calculated here: the Orthodox one with the Julian rule from Meeus, converted to the Gregorian calendar.
Holy days that move with Easter
Each of these keeps a fixed distance from Easter Sunday, so it moves with Easter every year. The figures under the clock give the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday that go with the coming Easter.
Holy day
Days from Easter Sunday
Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent
46 days before
Palm Sunday
7 days before
Good Friday
2 days before
Ascension Day
39 days after
Pentecost
49 days after
When Easter falls on April 1, or on March 31 in a leap year, Ash Wednesday lands on February 14, the date of the Valentine’s Day countdown. For a spring break or a family visit, count the days until any date.
Frequently asked questions
Is Good Friday a federal holiday?
No. Good Friday is not one of the 11 federal holidays in 5 U.S.C. 6103, so federal offices stay open, though some state governments and employers give the day off.