---
title: "Easter Date Calculator: Western and Orthodox | Past Crumbs"
description: "Western and Orthodox Easter for any year, with Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Ascension and Pentecost, plus a 20-year table."
url: https://pastcrumbs.me/easter-date-calculator/
---

Drawer III · Feasts

# Easter date calculator

Easter Sunday for the Western and Orthodox churches, with the feasts that move with it. From 1583 the two reckonings differ; for earlier years you get the single Julian reckoning.

## Why there are two Easters

Both churches follow the same old rule: Easter is the first Sunday after the church's full moon that falls on or after 21 March. That “full moon” comes from tables, not from the sky. Western churches use the Gregorian calendar and the corrected tables that came with it in 1582; Orthodox churches still reckon with the Julian calendar and the older tables.

Because 21 March in the Julian calendar is 3 April in ours, and the older moon tables differ from the Gregorian ones, Orthodox Easter is often later. Between 1900 and 2100 it falls on the same Sunday or 1, 4 or 5 weeks after the Western date, never before it.

Type a year or step through with the arrows. Ascension Day is forty days after Easter, counting Easter Day itself, so it is always a Thursday; Pentecost (Whitsunday) is seven weeks after Easter.

## Questions

**What are the earliest and latest dates for Easter?**

Western Easter always falls between 22 March and 25 April. It last fell on 22 March in 1818 and will next in 2285; it falls on 25 April in 1943 and again in 2038.

**Why are the Orthodox dates shown in the Gregorian calendar?**

So you can find them on a modern calendar. The Orthodox churches reckon Easter in the Julian calendar; in 2024, for example, that was 22 April Julian, which is 5 May Gregorian.

**Can I use this to date an old document?**

Yes, if it is dated by a feast, such as “the Tuesday after Easter”. For an English document before 1752, use the Julian dates, and remember that its year may have begun on 25 March.

## Sources

- Jean Meeus, *Astronomical Algorithms*, 2nd edition (Willmann-Bell, 1998), chapter 8, “Date of Easter”: the Gregorian method (Meeus/Jones/Butcher) and the Julian method used here.
- US Naval Observatory, [The Date of Easter](https://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/easter): the ecclesiastical full moon, the 21 March equinox, the Western range of 22 March to 25 April, and J.-M. Oudin's algorithm, which our tests use to check every year from 1583 to 9999.
- Church of England, [Book of Common Prayer: Tables and Rules](https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/4-tables-and-rules.pdf): the Easter rule, Quinquagesima seven weeks before Easter (Ash Wednesday is the Wednesday after it, 46 days before Easter), Ascension Day forty days after Easter and Whitsunday seven weeks after.