Ethiopian Calendar – for Any Year
The table below shows dates of a month in the Ethiopian calendar. Ethiopian public holidays are indicated in the calendar. Moving Ethiopian Orthodox fasting dates and other religious event dates are also indicated in the calendar.
Ethiopian Calendar dates are in normal font size while the Gregorian Calendar dates are in smaller, italic fonts.
To quickly convert specific Ethiopian date to Gregorian date instead of navigating through the Ethiopian calendar, please go to the date converter page.
Key differences between Ethiopian Calendar and Gregorian Calendar
Below, the key points which make the Ethiopian Calendar different from the Gregorian (English) Calendar are listed. But, note that this is not a detailed technical explanation of the Ethiopian Calendar.
- The Ethiopian Calendar has 13 months in a year.
- The first 12 Ethiopian Calendar months have 30 days each. Only the 13rd month has 5 or 6 days.
- The 13th month is called Pagume (ጳጉሜ in Amharic)
- When an Ethiopian year is not a leap year, the 13th month (Pagume) will have 5 days.
- Once in every 4 years, the Ethiopian calendar will have a leap year, hence the 13th month, Pagume, will have 6 days in the year. As an example, the Ethiopian year 2011 was a leap year. So, Pagume had 6 days in the Ethiopian year 2011.
- Ethiopian New Year is on September 1st (in the Ethiopian calendar), not on January 1st.
- Exact date of Ethiopian New year can shift by one day, depending on whether the ending year is an Ethiopian leap year or not. When the ending year is not an Ethiopian leap year, Ethiopian new year will be on September 11th.
- But, when the ending year is Ethiopian Leap year (i.e. when the ending year had 6 days in Pagume), New Year will be on September 12th. So, 9/11 is on the Ethiopian new year unless the ending year is a Leap year.
- From September 11th (or September 12thth following the leap year) to December 31st, the Ethiopian year is 7 years behind the Gregorian year. But, from January 1st to September 10th (or September 11th following the leap year), the Ethiopian year is 8 years behind. As an example, the Gregorian (English) date 11/27/2018 was 03/18/2011 in the Ethiopian calendar. Here, the Ethiopian year is 7 years behind the Gregorian year. But, the Gregorian date 05/26/2019 was 09/18/2011, hence 8 years behind in May.
- Ethiopian date is normally written in dd//mm/yyyy format. Therefore, the example date above 03/18/2011 is not actually in the common Ethiopian date writing format. It should be written like 18/03/2011.