How Many Days Until Easter?
Easter is the most famously movable holiday on the calendar: it can land on any Sunday from March 22 to April 25. The live counter below computes the date of the next Easter Sunday for you and shows exactly how many days remain.
When Is Easter and How the Date Is Computed
Easter follows a rule set at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325: it is the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the spring equinox. For calculation purposes the church fixes the equinox at March 21 and uses an "ecclesiastical" full moon from lookup tables rather than the astronomical one, so the result is fully deterministic. The algorithm that churns through those tables is called the computus, and this page uses the standard Gregorian version of it.
The interplay of moon phase and weekday gives Easter its wide 35-day range. March 22 and April 25 are the rare extremes; most years it lands somewhere in early-to-mid April. Eastern Orthodox churches apply the same rule to the older Julian calendar, which is why Orthodox Easter usually falls one to four weeks later.
Easter Traditions, Old and New
Easter is the oldest and most important feast of the Christian year, celebrating the resurrection, and it anchors a whole season: Lent runs for the forty days before it, bracketed by Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, and Good Friday, while Pentecost follows fifty days after. Many other observances — Mardi Gras among them — get their dates by counting backward or forward from Easter Sunday.
The folk traditions are a separate, cheerful layer. Decorated eggs are an ancient symbol of new life that long predates chocolate versions; the egg-delivering Easter Bunny arrived with German immigrants to America as the "Osterhase" in the 1700s. Egg hunts, egg rolling (the White House Easter Egg Roll dates to 1878), hot cross buns, and new spring clothes round out a holiday that doubles as a celebration of spring itself.
More Countdowns
- Days until Christmas
- Days until Halloween
- Days until Thanksgiving
- Days until New Year's Day
- Days until Easter
- Days until Valentine's Day
- Days until St. Patrick's Day
- Days until 4th of July
- Days until Mother's Day
- Days until Father's Day
- Days until Summer
Counting toward a date that is not a holiday? Use the date calculator to add or subtract any number of days, or jump straight to a future date with pages like 30 days from today and 90 days from today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox, so it moves every year — anywhere from March 22 to April 25. The live counter at the top of this page computes and shows the exact date of the next Easter Sunday.
The page computes Easter Sunday with the standard Gregorian computus (the church's official date algorithm), then counts whole calendar days from today to that Sunday, midnight to midnight. After Easter passes, it targets next year's date.
Eastern Orthodox churches use the same first-Sunday-after-the-full-moon rule but apply it to the Julian calendar, which currently runs 13 days behind the Gregorian. As a result Orthodox Easter usually falls one to four weeks after Western Easter, though occasionally the two coincide.