How Many Days Until the Winter Solstice?

the Winter Solstice 2026 is Monday, 21 December 2026

There are 124 days between 19 August 2026 and the Winter Solstice, which falls on Monday, 21 December 2026. That is 17 weeks and 5 days, or 84 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 2026-12-21 in ISO form and 12/21/2026 in the US format, it falls in ISO week 52 of 2026, and it is day 355 of 365.

How the date of the Winter Solstice is decided

The December solstice, the shortest day in the northern hemisphere, falling on 21 or 22 December.

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 Monday 21 December.

the Winter Solstice 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.

the Winter Solstice in the years after 2026

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 84 working days above.