St. Patrick's Day never leaves March 17, so only the weekday changes; 143 days from today brings the next one, Wednesday, March 17, 2027.
St. Patrick's Day 2027:
.
143 days to go.
Time left until 12:00 AM on March 17:
St. Patrick's Day falls on March 17.
60.8% of the time since St. Patrick's Day 2026 has gone by
Counting to midnight in: your device's time zone. How the count works
St. Patrick's Day falls on March 17. The date stays the same every year, so only the day of the week changes.
| Year | Date | Days away |
|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 143 days | |
| 2028 | 509 days | |
| 2029 | 874 days | |
| 2030 | 1,239 days | |
| 2031 | 1,604 days |
Every count on this page runs to March 17, the feast day of Saint Patrick. The Library of Congress explains that the patron saint of Ireland is honored on the anniversary of his death. The day began as a religious observance of Patrick bringing Catholicism to Ireland and has grown into a celebration of Irish heritage and culture.
Lent opens on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, and Ash Wednesday never comes later than March 10. Easter never comes earlier than March 22. March 17 is therefore inside Lent every year, whatever the date of Easter.
That matters most when March 17 is a Friday, as it is in 2028 and 2034. Under the norms of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, every Friday in Lent is a day of abstinence from meat for Latin Church Catholics aged 14 and older. Canon law lets a diocesan bishop dispense from that rule, and a pastor can grant individual dispensations under the bishop’s norms (canons 87 and 1245). Whether a meat dinner is allowed on a Friday St. Patrick’s Day is therefore decided diocese by diocese.
Only where an employer or a school decides so. Federal law sets no holiday for it: 5 U.S.C. 6103 names New Year’s Day, Christmas and nine other days, and March 17 is not among them. Federal offices stay open whenever it falls on a weekday.
Congress has marked the heritage side in another way. Public Law 101-418, passed in October 1990, made March 1991 Irish-American Heritage Month, and President George H. W. Bush issued the first proclamation for it in 1991.
New York City’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade, in 1762, is the earliest recorded celebration by Irish Americans in the United States, according to the Library of Congress. It soon became a yearly event. Military units organized it at first, and Irish fraternal societies took charge after the War of 1812.