Ethiopian holidays in 2026 and 2027

The eight days people look up most often. The full lists follow.

The days offices close, and the days marked nationally without closing. Some of these are fixed to the Ethiopian calendar, so their Western date shifts from year to year. Others are fixed to the Western calendar and never move. Confusing the two is how most published holiday lists go wrong.

Only two of these have a Tigrinya name we've checked. The rest are blank because we haven't confirmed them — not because Tigrinya uses the Amharic word, which for several of these it doesn't. If you know them, we'd like to hear from you.

These days aren't set by a calendar. Someone announces them — the Majlis confirms Eid and Mawlid by local sighting of the moon, and the Oromo, Sidama and Wolaita new years are called by community leaders.

That means no date here, rather than a guessed one. You can work out roughly when a new moon falls, but the announced day is often a day either side of it, and a date that looks certain and is wrong is worse than none at all.

The last column says roughly when each has fallen before. It's a guide, not a prediction.

Days that are widely kept but aren't public holidays — offices and shops stay open. Several are local rather than national, and where they're kept is noted beside the name.

The start and end dates below come from the calendar. The lengths come from how the church keeps each fast, which is a matter of practice rather than arithmetic — so those are taken from published sources.

The Apostles' Fast is the odd one. It begins after Fasika, which moves each year, and ends on a fixed Ethiopian date, which doesn't. So its length changes by weeks from one year to the next.

Most of these take one shape — a word meaning "blessed" or "happy", then the name of the day. Say it for one and you have said it for all of them.

Tap any Amharic name on this page and it opens with that word already typed, so you can see how it's written. You type the sounds and the fidel follows: mlekame gives መልካም.

Irreecha, Fichee-Chambalaalla and Gifaataa aren't in this list. The communities that keep them write them in Latin script, so a reader looking for those doesn't need a fidel keyboard.

Ethiopia's leap day comes at the end of the year, in Pagume, not in February. So for the twelve months after a six-day Pagume, every Ethiopian date lands a day later on the Western calendar than it did the year before. Genna "is" 7 January right up until the year it falls on 8 January.

The Ethiopian year 2019 is a leap year, so the year after it — 2020 EC — runs from 12 September 2027 to 10 September 2028, a day later than usual. Four of the five days below shift with it. Workers' Day doesn't, because it's fixed to the Western calendar rather than the Ethiopian one, and the two come back into step on the Western leap day, 29 February 2028.

The gap widens once more, permanently, at 2100. Ethiopia keeps the older leap rule and it has no century exception; the Western calendar skips 2100 and Ethiopia doesn't. From March that year Genna falls on 8 January in three years out of four, where today it falls on 7 January.

Yekatit 12 falls on 19 February in three years out of four and on 20 February in the fourth. That is one day, not two — but the published lists split into two families, one printing 19 February and the other 20 February, and each has frozen a single year's date and published it as the rule. Neither is right about the other three years.

We follow neither, and convert Yekatit 12 afresh for each year instead. Eight consecutive years:

For a few of these days the published sources disagree. Each is below — both claims, which one we follow, and why.

The converter takes any date between the two calendars, and today's date has a page of its own. So do the thirteen months and the day the year turns on. Ezra's home page has the rest of the Amharic typing tools.