Enter a year to compare Western and Orthodox Easter, then review Christian movable feast dates, Holy Week, Pentecost, Advent, transfer dates.
Last updated
Christian movable feasts calendar Enter a Gregorian year to compare Western Easter with Orthodox Easter,
then review the main Lent, Eastertide, and Advent anchor dates in one
calendar sheet.
Quick jump
Scope and assumptions
Western dates are anchored to Gregorian Easter and fixed day offsets.
Orthodox Easter is shown as a Gregorian civil-date comparison, not as
a full Orthodox feast calendar.
Ascension and Corpus Christi include common Sunday transfer dates
because many dioceses do not keep the Thursday observance.
Feast calendar
Sunday, 5 April 2026
Western Easter in 2026. Orthodox Easter 7 days later (1 week).
Orthodox Easter
12 Apr 2026
Easter gap
7 days
Advent Sunday
29 Nov 2026
Easter season
50 days
Interpretation
This sheet is strongest for quickly locating the main Western movable
feasts, checking how far Orthodox Easter differs in the same civil
year, and spotting where transferred observances may shift parish
calendars.
Advent uses the standard nearest-Sunday rule: Nearest Sunday to 30 November (27 November to 3 December).
Western Lent runs 46 days from Ash Wednesday
to Easter, while Pentecost lands on the 50th day of Eastertide.
Feast table
Main dates for 2026
Feast
Date
Basis
Tradition
Ash Wednesday
18 Feb 2026
46 days before Western Easter
Western / many Anglican calendars
Palm Sunday
29 Mar 2026
7 days before Western Easter
Broad Western use
Maundy Thursday
2 Apr 2026
3 days before Western Easter
Holy Week / many Western calendars
Good Friday
3 Apr 2026
2 days before Western Easter
Broad Western use
Holy Saturday
4 Apr 2026
1 day before Western Easter
Holy Week / many Western calendars
Western Easter
5 Apr 2026
Gregorian computus anchor date
Western churches
Easter Monday
6 Apr 2026
1 day after Western Easter
Civil or church-calendar planning date in many places
Orthodox Easter
12 Apr 2026
Julian paschalion rendered as a Gregorian civil date
Orthodox comparison date
Ascension (Thursday)
14 May 2026
39 days after Western Easter
Traditional Western observance
Ascension (Sunday transfer)
17 May 2026
42 days after Western Easter
Common local transfer
Pentecost
24 May 2026
49 days after Western Easter
Broad Christian observance
Trinity Sunday
31 May 2026
56 days after Western Easter
Western / many Anglican calendars
Corpus Christi (Thursday)
4 Jun 2026
60 days after Western Easter
Latin Rite observance
Corpus Christi (Sunday transfer)
7 Jun 2026
63 days after Western Easter
Common local transfer
First Sunday of Advent
29 Nov 2026
Nearest Sunday to 30 November
Western liturgical year opening
Nearby years
Compare Easter, Pentecost, and Advent around 2026
Use this when a parish, school, choir, or travel plan needs more than one year of movable-feast dates.
Christian movable feasts calculator for Easter, Lent, Pentecost, and Advent
Use this Christian movable feasts calculator to see the main Western feast dates for any Gregorian year, then compare them with Orthodox Easter on the same civil calendar. It is useful when you need Easter-linked dates quickly, want to understand how far the traditions diverge in a given year, or need the usual Sunday-transfer dates for Ascension and Corpus Christi.
What this Christian movable feasts calculator shows
The calculator is designed around one practical question: after you know the year, which Sundays and weekdays structure the Western liturgical cycle around Easter, and how does Orthodox Easter compare in that same civil year? The result sheet therefore starts with Gregorian Western Easter, then lists Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, and the First Sunday of Advent.
Orthodox Easter appears as a comparison date rather than as a full Orthodox feast sequence. That distinction matters because the surrounding observances do not map one-for-one across traditions. In other words, the page helps you compare the Easter anchors honestly instead of implying that one Western offset table can stand in for every Christian calendar.
How the movable feast dates are calculated
Western Easter is calculated with the Gregorian computus, the arithmetic method that identifies the Easter Sunday date used in the Western churches. Once Easter is known, the main Western observances are fixed offsets: Ash Wednesday is 46 days before Easter, Palm Sunday is 7 days before, Good Friday is 2 days before, Ascension Thursday is 39 days after, Pentecost is 49 days after, Trinity Sunday is 56 days after, and Corpus Christi is 60 days after.
Orthodox Easter is calculated from the Julian paschalion and then shown here as a Gregorian civil date so you can compare it directly with the Western result. Advent does not use an Easter offset at all. Instead, the First Sunday of Advent is the Sunday nearest to 30 November, which means it always falls between 27 November and 3 December.
Ash Wednesday = Western Easter - 46 days
Western Lent begins 46 calendar days before Easter Sunday.
Pentecost = Western Easter + 49 days
Pentecost lands on the fiftieth day of Eastertide when counting Easter Sunday itself.
Advent Sunday = Sunday nearest 30 November
The First Sunday of Advent opens the Western liturgical year.
Worked examples and how to read the gap
In 2025 the Western and Orthodox Easter dates coincide on Sunday, 20 April 2025. That makes the comparison simple: Ash Wednesday is Wednesday, 5 March 2025, Ascension Thursday is Thursday, 29 May 2025, Pentecost is Sunday, 8 June 2025, and Corpus Christi is Thursday, 19 June 2025. If your diocese transfers Ascension or Corpus Christi to Sunday, the calculator also shows the common Sunday observance dates so you do not have to add those offsets manually.
A year such as 2024 is more revealing because the traditions diverge. Western Easter fell on 31 March 2024, while Orthodox Easter fell on 5 May 2024, a gap of 35 days. Seeing that gap in one place is useful for parish communications, school term planning, choir schedules, travel, or any context where the user needs to compare liturgical calendars without mixing traditions carelessly.
Using the nearby-year comparison for planning
Static movable-feast tables are helpful, but many real planning questions span more than one year. The calculator now includes nearby years so you can compare Western Easter, Orthodox Easter, Pentecost, Advent Sunday, and the civil-calendar Easter gap without opening several separate tables. That is useful for recurring retreats, school calendars, music schedules, publishing calendars, family travel, or annual parish events.
The feast table also includes the practical Holy Week and Easter Week dates many users need immediately after finding Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Monday. Those dates are simple Western offsets, but putting them in the same worksheet reduces counting mistakes and makes the page more useful than a bare Easter lookup.
Why liturgical tables can disagree
Different churches publish movable feasts for different purposes. A Roman Catholic table may include lectionary cycles, weeks of Ordinary Time, and the Body and Blood of Christ. An Anglican Book of Common Prayer table may include Rogation Sunday, Sundays after Trinity, or Septuagesima. Orthodox calendars use Pascha as the anchor for a different movable cycle. Those differences do not make one table wrong; they show why scope matters.
This calculator therefore keeps its scope visible. It gives a broad Western movable-feast worksheet, common transfer dates for Ascension and Corpus Christi, and an Orthodox Easter comparison date. It does not try to replace a local diocesan calendar, a parish or cathedral calendar, or a tradition-specific Orthodox paschal cycle.
Limitations and local observance differences
This page is a calendar helper, not a substitute for a local church or diocese calendar. Some observances are transferred, some traditions name or rank feast days differently, and some Orthodox jurisdictions still publish dates in ways that deserve direct local confirmation. The calculator also does not attempt to generate the full Orthodox movable cycle from Orthodox Easter, because that would require a broader tradition-specific table than the scope of this page.
Historical edge cases matter too. The calculator uses the Gregorian civil calendar view for supported years, so it is not trying to reconstruct every local historical calendar adoption before the modern era. Use it for contemporary planning, comparison, and education rather than for settling every historical or jurisdictional question about liturgical observance.
Why are Western and Orthodox Easter sometimes different?
Western churches calculate Easter from the Gregorian computus, while most Orthodox churches still determine Pascha from the Julian paschalion and then publish the result on the modern civil calendar. Because the two systems use different calendar rules and slightly different paschal conditions, the dates can match exactly in some years and diverge by several weeks in others.
Why do some calendars move Ascension or Corpus Christi to Sunday?
In many Roman Catholic dioceses and some Anglican settings, Ascension or Corpus Christi may be transferred from Thursday to the following Sunday to make parish observance easier. That is why the calculator shows both the traditional Thursday date and the common Sunday-transfer date instead of assuming every user follows the same local calendar practice.
Does this calculator generate the full Orthodox movable cycle too?
No. The page shows Orthodox Easter as a comparison date, but the rest of the listed offsets are the main Western feast dates anchored to Western Easter. That is deliberate, because a full Orthodox movable-feast calendar deserves its own tradition-specific rules and terminology rather than being implied by a Western offset table.
Why can Advent Sunday fall in either November or December?
The First Sunday of Advent is defined as the Sunday nearest to 30 November, not as a fixed December date. That rule means the observance always lands between 27 November and 3 December, depending on which day of the week 30 November falls on in the selected year.
Does the calculator include Maundy Thursday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Monday?
Yes. The feast table includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday as Western offsets around Easter. These are included because many people using a movable feasts calculator need the whole Holy Week and Easter Week planning sequence, not only the headline Easter date.
Why does the page compare nearby years?
Many planning questions are not limited to one year. Nearby-year comparison helps you see whether Western and Orthodox Easter coincide or diverge, whether Pentecost or Advent Sunday moves into a difficult planning window, and how recurring parish, school, or family events shift across several years.
Is this a Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, or general Christian calendar?
It is a general Christian movable-feasts worksheet with a Western offset table and an Orthodox Easter comparison date. It includes Roman Catholic and Anglican-relevant observances such as Ascension, Corpus Christi, and transfer-date notes, but it does not replace a full local Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Lutheran, or parish-specific calendar.
