Ramadan 2026 has already happened. It was Wednesday, 18 February 2026, 182 days ago. This page is kept because the date and the rule behind it are still worth looking up — for the live countdown, go to Ramadan 2027, or to the always-current countdown.
Ramadan 2026 is Wednesday, 18 February 2026
Ramadan 2026 fell on Wednesday, 18 February 2026, which was 182 days before 19 August 2026. That is exactly 26 weeks, or 127 working days once Saturdays, Sundays and the US federal holidays in between are taken out — the figure that matters if you are counting delivery lead time or a work schedule rather than sleeps. The date is 2026-02-18 in ISO form and 2/18/2026 in the US format, it falls in ISO week 8 of 2026, and it is day 49 of 365.
How the date of Ramadan is decided
Begins with the sighting of the crescent moon marking the first day of the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Because the Islamic year is purely lunar it moves about eleven days earlier each Gregorian year, and because the start depends on local moon sighting, the date can differ by a day between countries. Any date given in advance is an estimate.
That makes it a computed date: there is no fixed day and no simple weekday rule, so it has to be worked out from a formula or a calendar of its own each year. In 2026 it works out as Wednesday 18 February.
This date is an estimate, not a fixed point. Ramadan depends on observation rather than arithmetic, so the date announced locally can differ by a day from any date calculated in advance, and it can differ between countries in the same year. We show the arithmetic approximation and label it, rather than presenting it as settled. If the date matters — for travel, a booking or time off — confirm it with the community or authority you are following. How we produce these dates, and which of them are approximate, is set out on the holiday sources page.
Ramadan is an observance rather than a federal holiday. Offices, banks and schools stay open unless an individual employer chooses otherwise, and it counts as an ordinary business day in every calculator here. Only the eleven federal holidays are treated as non-working days — the list and the reasoning are on the holiday sources page.
Ramadan in the years after 2026
| Year | Date | Day | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 8 February 2027 | Monday | Ramadan 2027 |
| 2028 | 28 January 2028 | Friday | Ramadan 2028 |
| 2029 | 16 January 2029 | Tuesday | Ramadan 2029 |
Both the date and the weekday move, because the rule is not tied to either.
Every convention used above — whether the start date counts, how month ends are clamped, which holidays close an office — is written out on the methodology page, including how we count the 127 working days above.