When Is Easter 2027? Why the Date Changes Every Year

November 11, 2026

Easter 2027 falls on Sunday 28 March 2027, which is early for Easter. Lent begins five and a half weeks before, on Ash Wednesday, 10 February 2027. And the Easter season lasts fifty days, until Pentecost on Sunday 16 May.

Why 28 March, when Easter 2026 was on 5 April and Easter 2028 will be on 16 April? Unlike Christmas, Easter has no fixed date. Let us look at the dates for 2027, then at the beautiful (and very old) reason why they move.

The key dates of Lent and Easter 2027

Ash Wednesday: 10 February 2027, the start of Lent
First Sunday of Lent: 14 February 2027
Palm Sunday: 21 March 2027, the start of Holy Week
Holy Thursday: 25 March 2027; in the evening, the Mass of the Lord's Supper opens the Easter Triduum
Good Friday: 26 March 2027
Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil: 27 March 2027
Easter Sunday: 28 March 2027
Ascension: Thursday 6 May 2027, forty days after Easter, or Sunday 9 May 2027 in countries where it is moved to the following Sunday
Pentecost: Sunday 16 May 2027, fifty days after Easter

A word about the Ascension. The Church celebrates it on the fortieth day after Easter, a Thursday. But in countries where it is not a holy day of obligation, the bishops move it to the following Sunday, the Seventh Sunday of Easter, so that everyone can celebrate it. This varies from country to country, and sometimes from one region to another: check with your diocese or your bishops' conference.

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Easter dates from 2026 to 2030

Here are the next few years, with Ash Wednesday and Pentecost, so you can plan ahead:

2026: Ash Wednesday 18 February, Easter 5 April, Pentecost 24 May
2027: Ash Wednesday 10 February, Easter 28 March, Pentecost 16 May
2028: Ash Wednesday 1 March, Easter 16 April, Pentecost 4 June
2029: Ash Wednesday 14 February, Easter 1 April, Pentecost 20 May
2030: Ash Wednesday 6 March, Easter 21 April, Pentecost 9 June

You will notice that everything moves together. Once you know the date of Easter, you know almost the whole year: Ash Wednesday is always 46 days before, Palm Sunday one week before, the Ascension 39 days after (on the fortieth day, counting Easter itself) and Pentecost 49 days after (on the fiftieth day). Easter is the hinge on which the whole liturgical year turns. (To see how the seasons fit together, read our guide When does the liturgical year start?)

Why does the date of Easter change every year?

The short answer: Easter is tied to the moon, not only to the sun.

Jesus died and rose again at the time of the Jewish Passover. The Gospels tell us that he was crucified on a Friday and that the tomb was found empty on the first day of the week, the Sunday. Now the Jewish calendar is lunar: Passover begins on the 14th day of the spring month of Nisan, the night of the full moon. So from the very beginning, Christians remembered the Resurrection in spring, around the first full moon, and very soon, on a Sunday, the day of the Resurrection.

The rule the Catholic Church follows today can be said in one sentence:

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox.

Let us take it piece by piece:

The spring equinox. For this calculation, the Church does not look at the sky: the equinox is fixed by convention on 21 March, every year.
The first full moon on or after that date. This is not the full moon you see through a telescope either, but an "ecclesiastical" full moon, calculated with tables based on a 19-year cycle of the moon. It is very close to the real one, usually within a day or two, but it means everyone can know the date of Easter years in advance, without depending on an astronomer.
The Sunday after that full moon. If the full moon falls on a Sunday, Easter is the Sunday after.

In 2027, the ecclesiastical full moon falls on Monday 22 March, just after 21 March. The next Sunday is 28 March: that is Easter.

The earliest and latest possible dates

Because of this rule, Easter can never fall before 22 March (when the full moon falls on Saturday 21 March) or after 25 April. Both extremes are rare. The last Easter on 22 March was in 1818, and the next will be in 2285. The last Easter on 25 April was in 1943, and the next will be in 2038.

What did the Council of Nicaea decide?

In the first centuries, Christians did not all celebrate Easter on the same day. Some churches in Asia Minor kept it on the 14th of Nisan itself, whatever the day of the week; most kept it on the following Sunday. In 325, the first great council of the Church, held at Nicaea (in today's Turkey), wanted this to end: all the Churches agreed to celebrate Easter together, on a Sunday. The Catechism sums up the agreement as the rule we just saw: the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (see Catechism, 1170).

Historians add one nuance: the council did not write out the calculation tables itself. The detailed method, which came largely from the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, spread only gradually, and it took several centuries for the whole Church to calculate the date in the same way.

Why is Orthodox Easter often on another date?

Orthodox Christians follow the same basic rule: Easter is the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. The difference is the calendar.

By the sixteenth century, the old Julian calendar, inherited from Julius Caesar, had drifted about ten days away from the sun, and 21 March on the calendar no longer matched the real equinox. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII corrected it: this is the Gregorian calendar, the one the whole world uses today for daily life. But most Orthodox Churches still calculate the date of Easter with the Julian calendar and the older moon tables. Today, the Julian calendar is 13 days behind ours, so their "21 March" falls on our 3 April.

The result: sometimes Catholics and Orthodox celebrate Easter on the same day, sometimes a week apart, sometimes up to five weeks apart. In 2027, Orthodox Easter falls on 2 May, five weeks after Catholic Easter. For the other years in our table: 12 April 2026, 16 April 2028 (the same day as Catholics), 8 April 2029 and 28 April 2030.

In 2025, Easter fell on the same day for all Christians, on 20 April, in the year that marked the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Many saw it as a sign. The Catholic Church has said many times that it longs for all Christians to celebrate the Resurrection on one common date, and the Catechism speaks of the search for an agreement (see Catechism, 1170). Learn more about our brothers and sisters in faith in our guide to Catholics and other Christians.

How the forty days of Lent are counted

Lent is the time of preparation for Easter. The number forty is not chosen at random: Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert before beginning his mission, and the Catechism says that by the forty days of Lent, the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert (see Catechism, 540). Forty is also the number of years Israel walked in the desert towards the Promised Land.

Officially, Lent runs from Ash Wednesday until the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday. At that Mass, Lent ends and the Easter Triduum begins: the three holiest days of the year, from Holy Thursday evening through Good Friday and Holy Saturday to the evening of Easter Sunday.

So where do the forty days come from, if you count more than forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter? The traditional answer is that Sundays are not counted. Every Sunday is a little Easter, a celebration of the Resurrection, so it is never a day of fasting. Count from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday and you get 46 days. Take away the six Sundays, and you have forty days of penance.

This goes back to Pope Gregory I, Saint Gregory the Great. In 601, he moved the start of Lent to 46 days before Easter: forty days of fasting, plus the six Sundays, the traditional feast days, when the rules of fasting did not apply. That is why Lent begins on a Wednesday, and why the Lenten season still spans 46 days today.

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence from meat for Catholics (Code of Canon Law, canon 1251). The details (ages, what counts as a fast, other forms of penance) are set by each bishops' conference, so check the rules where you live.

During Lent, the priest wears purple, the color of penance and waiting, the Gloria and the Alleluia fall silent, and on the Fourth Sunday (in 2027, 7 March) rose may be worn as a sign that the joy of Easter is near. Our guide to the meaning of the liturgical colors explains them all.

Easter is not one day, but fifty

Here is something many Catholics do not know: Easter is not over on Easter Monday. The Easter season lasts fifty days, from Easter Sunday to Pentecost. The Church celebrates these fifty days "in joyful exultation as one feast day", in the words of the Church's norms for the liturgical year, as one great Sunday.

The first eight days, the Octave of Easter, are each celebrated like Easter Day itself. In 2027, the octave ends on Sunday 4 April, the Second Sunday of Easter, also called Divine Mercy Sunday.
The Paschal candle, lit at the Easter Vigil, stands near the altar, and the priest wears white, the color of the Resurrection.
The Alleluia returns, everywhere and all the time.
Instead of the Angelus, the Church prays the Regina Caeli, which begins "Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia."
On the fortieth day comes the Ascension, and on the fiftieth, Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which closes the season in red.

The Catechism calls Easter the "Feast of feasts" (see Catechism, 1169). If Lent lasts forty days, it makes sense that the joy lasts even longer. So do not put the chocolate eggs away too quickly: keep the feast going until Pentecost.

See the liturgical calendar in Catho+

In Catho+, the liturgical calendar shows each day of Lent, Holy Week and the Easter season, with the readings and the saint of the day, so you never miss a feast.