In short: Easter Sunday 2027 falls on 28 March in the Western (Gregorian) calendar, with Good Friday on 26 March and Easter Monday on 29 March. Orthodox churches, following the Julian calendar, keep Easter on 2 May 2027 — 35 days later. In our 2027 dataset of 191 country pages, 100 countries list Good Friday as a public holiday and 83 list Easter Monday, while the United States lists neither.
9 October 2026 — The answer to when is Easter 2027 is Sunday, 28 March 2027 in the Western church and Sunday, 2 May 2027 in the Orthodox church. Both the Easter 2027 date and the Orthodox date are now fixed in our 2027 dataset, published as part of the 2027 public holiday calendar for 191 countries. This article gives the Easter 2027 date, the Good Friday 2027 and Easter Monday 2027 dates that hang from it, and the verified count of which countries actually take those Easter days off.
When is Easter 2027?
There are two answers, and in 2027 they sit five weeks apart. In the Western (Gregorian) calendar the Easter 2027 date is Sunday, 28 March 2027. In the Orthodox calendar, Easter — usually called Pascha — falls on Sunday, 2 May 2027. Because Easter is anchored to a Sunday, the two working days that most governments legislate around, Good Friday and Easter Monday, move with it. In 2027 that puts Western Good Friday on Friday, 26 March 2027, and Western Easter Monday on Monday, 29 March 2027; the Orthodox world keeps Good Friday on Friday, 30 April 2027, and Easter Monday on Monday, 3 May 2027.
| Observance | Western (Gregorian) | Orthodox (Julian) |
|---|---|---|
| Easter Sunday | Sunday, 28 March 2027 | Sunday, 2 May 2027 |
| Good Friday | Friday, 26 March 2027 | Friday, 30 April 2027 |
| Easter Monday | Monday, 29 March 2027 | Monday, 3 May 2027 |
The Orthodox calendar also fixes its earlier milestones from the same date: Great Lent begins on Monday, 15 March 2027, and Orthodox Palm Sunday falls on Sunday, 25 April 2027, a week before Pascha. Western Lent and Holy Week are tied to the 28 March date instead, which is why the two traditions appear to be on entirely different schedules in 2027.
Why the date moves every year
Easter is a movable feast, and the best-known Christian holiday whose date is calculated rather than fixed. The calculation is called computus. In the West the rule is straightforward to state: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the ecclesiastical spring equinox, which the church fixes at 21 March. The “full moon” in that rule is a calculated lunar table rather than the astronomical full moon, but the effect is the same — Easter can land anywhere between 22 March and 25 April.
That is a spread of more than a month, so the Easter 2027 date is not unusual, but it does fall on the early side. For context, Easter landed on 20 April in 2025 and on 5 April in 2026, then on 28 March in 2027, before moving again in 2028. Anyone who plans staffing, travel or school terms around Easter has to look the date up every single year, because it never repeats on a fixed day.
Which countries get Good Friday off
In the 2027 dataset, 100 of the 191 countries we track list Good Friday as a public holiday. That figure combines two calendars. Breaking it down: 91 countries observe Good Friday on the Western date, 26 March 2027, and 10 countries observe it on the Orthodox date, 30 April 2027 — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lebanon, Romania and Serbia. Lebanon is counted in both groups because it lists Good Friday on both dates, which is why 91 + 10 − 1 = 100.
On the Western date, Good Friday is a public holiday across much of Europe, in much of the Commonwealth, and in many countries across the Americas and Africa. It is one of the most widely observed holiday dates in the dataset — a reminder that Easter’s footprint is broader than Easter Sunday alone.
The table below is a representative sample of the 2027 data. A dash means the day is not listed as a national public holiday for that country. The pattern it shows is the one running through this article: Good Friday is the common thread, Easter Monday is patchier, and Easter Sunday itself is named by relatively few countries.
| Country | Good Friday | Easter Sunday | Easter Monday |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| Ireland | — | — | 29 March 2027 |
| Germany | 26 March 2027 | — | 29 March 2027 |
| France | — | — | 29 March 2027 |
| Italy | — | 28 March 2027 | 29 March 2027 |
| Spain | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| Portugal | 26 March 2027 | 28 March 2027 | — |
| Netherlands | 26 March 2027 | 28 March 2027 | 29 March 2027 |
| Denmark | 26 March 2027 | 28 March 2027 | 29 March 2027 |
| Norway | 26 March 2027 | 28 March 2027 | 29 March 2027 |
| Sweden | 26 March 2027 | 28 March 2027 | 29 March 2027 |
| Poland | — | 28 March 2027 | 29 March 2027 |
| Australia | 26 March 2027 | — | 29 March 2027 |
| New Zealand | 26 March 2027 | — | 29 March 2027 |
| Canada | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| United States | — | — | — |
| Brazil | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| Mexico | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| South Africa | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| Nigeria | 26 March 2027 | — | 29 March 2027 |
| Philippines | 26 March 2027 | — | — |
| Greece | 30 April 2027 | 2 May 2027 | 3 May 2027 |
| Serbia | 30 April 2027 | 2 May 2027 | 3 May 2027 |
| Cyprus | 30 April 2027 | 2 May 2027 | 3 May 2027 |
| Romania | 30 April 2027 | 2 May 2027 | 3 May 2027 |
| Ethiopia | 30 April 2027 | 2 May 2027 | — |
Which countries get Easter Monday off
Easter Monday is considerably less common than Good Friday. In the 2027 dataset, 83 of 191 countries list it as a public holiday. Of those, 79 observe it on the Western date, 29 March 2027, and 4 on the Orthodox date, 3 May 2027 — Cyprus, Georgia, Greece and Serbia.
The gap between the two days is the most useful thing to know about Easter 2027. Some countries take only Good Friday, some take only Easter Monday, and some take both. In our data, 58 countries list both Good Friday and Easter Monday; 125 countries list at least one of the two; and 66 countries list neither.
One country needs a footnote. The United Kingdom appears in our dataset with Good Friday as its only Easter-related national public holiday. Easter Monday is not recorded as a UK-wide statutory date — but that does not mean Britons do not get it off. Easter Monday is in practice a bank holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while the pattern in Scotland differs, so the Easter break in the UK varies by nation. Our dataset holds only the UK-wide entry, and we flag the regional variation here rather than present a single number as the whole story. For any specific year the official government announcement is the final word; our United Kingdom 2027 public holidays page lists exactly what the dataset records.
Why Orthodox Easter is 35 days later in 2027
The two Easters run on different calendars. Western churches use the Gregorian calendar and the computus rule set out above. Orthodox churches use the same “first Sunday after the paschal full moon” logic, but they calculate it in the Julian calendar, which currently runs 13 days behind the Gregorian. On top of that, the Orthodox tradition keeps an older rule that Easter must not precede Jewish Passover — a rule the Western churches no longer apply.
The result is that Orthodox Easter usually lands one to five weeks after Western Easter. In 2027 the gap is at the wide end: 35 days, or five weeks. The two dates fall on the same day when the calendars and the rules line up — the next time that happens is Sunday, 16 April 2028.
For the countries involved this is not a small detail. Greece, Serbia, Cyprus and Romania cluster their Easter holidays around 30 April–3 May rather than 26–29 March, and Ethiopia observes Orthodox Good Friday and Easter on the same Orthodox dates. That 35-day gap splits the year’s Christian holiday season into two separate blocks, with real consequences for travel, staffing and school calendars.
The country with no Easter holiday at all
Here is the surprise at the centre of Easter 2027: the country with the most visible Easter culture in the English-speaking world, the United States, has no Easter public holiday at all. Good Friday is not a federal holiday, Easter Monday is not a federal holiday, and Easter Sunday itself is not listed either. On our 2027 record, the United States reports no Easter-related statutory day off.
That is not an omission in the data. US federal holidays are set by Congress and the President, and they do not include religious observances; Easter Sunday falls on a Sunday in any case, and the US system does not create substitute weekdays for weekend holidays. The practical effect is that Easter in America is a Sunday event and a retail season rather than a statutory day off. Some states and some employers do close on Good Friday or the Monday, but those are local or voluntary arrangements, not part of the national calendar. So the loudest Easter market is, in holiday terms, the quietest — a useful reminder that cultural prominence and legal holiday status are two different things. The full 2027 list is on our United States 2027 public holidays page.
Easter Sunday itself: when it is a listed holiday
Only 36 of 191 countries list Easter Sunday itself as a public holiday. That number looks low until you remember that Easter Sunday is always a Sunday, so for most office workers it is a non-working day before any legislation is applied. The countries that do name it tend to be those where the holiday is written into law regardless of the weekday — Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Poland in Western Europe, and a set of Orthodox countries including Greece, Serbia, Cyprus, Romania and Ethiopia.
This is why the Good Friday and Easter Monday counts above matter more than the Easter Sunday figure. The days that can shift a working week are Good Friday and Easter Monday, not Easter Sunday.
Planning around Easter 2027
Wherever you are, the usable Easter break in 2027 is built from two dates. In a country that takes both Good Friday and Easter Monday, the weekend of 26–29 March 2027 becomes a four-day break, and a few days of leave around it can turn it into a full week. In the Orthodox countries the same structure arrives five weeks later, over 30 April–3 May 2027.
That 35-day separation is the single most important planning fact for 2027. It means the Western Easter cluster in late March and the Orthodox cluster in early May are genuinely separate holiday seasons, not one long stretch. For travel demand, recruitment, payroll and cross-border team scheduling, they need to be planned separately. Our long weekends in 2027 guide counts the breaks each country actually gets, and the country pages give the full year:
For the wider picture, browse all countries.
How we count these holidays
The figures in this article come from the same method we apply across the site. We count a date only when it appears as a public holiday for a country — that is, when its type is National, Substitute or Bank holiday. We exclude dates typed as Observance, Religious or Regional, which keeps religious feast days, commemorations and sub-national holidays out of the national count. The 2027 dataset used here covers 191 country pages.
Two honest caveats follow from that. First, a country that is absent from a count is not necessarily a country where the day means nothing — it is a country where the day is not a national public holiday, and the UK case above shows how regional arrangements can sit underneath a single national entry. Second, national calendars themselves change: dates are amended, substituted and gazetted at short notice, so any dataset is a starting point rather than the final authority. Where the picture is more complicated than a single number, we say so on the page rather than let the number stand alone, and where a holiday’s exact date depends on a decision made closer to the time, we label it rather than guess.
Easter 2027 is a good test of how a holiday calendar should be read. The date itself is certain — 28 March in the West, 2 May in the Orthodox world — but whether that date becomes a day off depends entirely on where you are. One hundred countries take Good Friday, eighty-three take Easter Monday, sixty-six take neither, and the biggest Easter market of all takes no statutory day. The date is the easy part.
— Public Holiday Calendar editorial team
About Public Holiday Calendar
PublicHolidayCalendar.com publishes public holiday and school holiday calendars for 192 countries and territories, covering 2025, 2026 and 2027. Dates are sourced from official national channels; anything unverified is labelled rather than estimated. Known data-quality issues are disclosed on the affected pages rather than hidden.
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