World Calendars
Persian date today
The official calendar of Iran follows the sun. Each year starts on Nowruz, the day of the March equinox, and the calendar grew out of one made by Omar Khayyam's team in 1079.
20 Aban 1405 SH
۲۰ آبان ۱۴۰۵
- In the Gregorian calendar
- Wednesday 11 November 2026
- This day began
- At midnight, as Wednesday 11 November 2026 begins
- This day ends
- At midnight, as Thursday 12 November 2026 begins
- Year 1405 SH began
- Saturday 21 March 2026
- Next new year
- Sunday 21 March 2027 (in 130 days)
- This year has
- 365 days in 12 months
- Year 1 began
- 21 March AD 622 (Gregorian calendar counted backwards)
- Who uses it
- Iran, as its official calendar; also widely used in Afghanistan
- New year
- Nowruz, on the day of the March equinox or the day after
- Years count from
- 622 CE, so the year that began in March 2026 is 1405
- A year has
- Six months of 31 days, five of 30, then one of 29 or 30
Next holidays in this calendar
130 days
Nowruz 1 Farvardin 1406 SH
21 March 2027 · Persian (Solar Hijri)
142 days
Sizdah Bedar 13 Farvardin 1406 SH
2 April 2027 · Persian (Solar Hijri)
How the Solar Hijri calendar works
The year has 12 months. The first six have 31 days, the next five have 30, and the last, Esfand, has 29 days, or 30 in a leap year. New Year's Day, Nowruz, is 1 Farvardin. If the March equinox happens before noon Tehran time, that day is 1 Farvardin. If it happens after noon, that day is 30 Esfand and Nowruz is the next day.
| No. | Month | Days |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Farvardin | 31 |
| 2 | Ordibehesht | 31 |
| 3 | Khordad | 31 |
| 4 | Tir | 31 |
| 5 | Mordad | 31 |
| 6 | Shahrivar | 31 |
| 7 | Mehr | 30 |
| 8 | Aban | 30 |
| 9 | Azar | 30 |
| 10 | Dey | 30 |
| 11 | Bahman | 30 |
| 12 | Esfand | 29 or 30 |
The month names come from Avestan names of Zoroastrian divinities. Farvardin comes from the word for the guardian spirits of the righteous, Tir from the star Sirius and Mehr from "covenant". Years are abbreviated SH or AP. From Nowruz to 31 December, subtract 621 from the Gregorian year; from 1 January to Nowruz, subtract 622. The year that began in March 2026 is 1405.
Variants and the method used here
Iran's official calendar is astronomical. No formula sets the leap years. Each year has 365 or 366 days, as needed to keep Nowruz on the equinox rule. Current practice measures noon on the 52.5° E meridian, which also defines Iran's time zone.
This site uses the arithmetic rule also found in ICU and Microsoft .NET, a 33-year cycle with 8 leap years. Our dates come from @internationalized/date, whose code follows ICU. FarsiWeb, which publishes a free version of this rule, reports that it gives the same dates as the official calendar from 1925 to at least 2088, and ICU puts the end of the match around 2090. A longer comparison in the ICU4X project counted 70 years between 1304 and 2403 SH where the rule places a leap year wrongly, which moves Nowruz by a day. Dates before 1925 are calculated backwards with the same rule, for years when this calendar was not yet official.
A second arithmetic rule, the 2820-year cycle proposed by Ahmad Birashk, has an average year of 365.24219852 days, against 365.242362 days for the mean March equinox year. It first fails in 2025. The year 1403 was a leap year in Iran, with 30 Esfand on 20 March 2025, and the 2820-year rule misses that day. The 33-year rule used here gets it right.
A short history
The present calendar is a simplification of the Jalali calendar of Omar Khayyam and his team, who worked for eight years in Isfahan. In that calendar, introduced in 1079, each month began when the sun entered a new sign of the zodiac, and 15 March 1079 was 1 Farvardin.
On 21 February 1911 Iran's parliament adopted a sidereal calendar with months named after the signs of the zodiac, used until March 1925. The present calendar was legally adopted on 31 March 1925, with fixed month lengths and the Hijra as its epoch.
Afghanistan adopted the calendar in 1922, using Arabic names of the zodiac signs for the months. Under the Taliban's first rule, from 1996 to 2001, the lunar Hijri calendar was imposed, and the year changed overnight from 1375 to 1417. As of 2024, Iran is the only official user, though the calendar remains the most widely used in Afghanistan.
Sources
How this site calculates the date: Solar Hijri calendar, official in Iran, computed with the 33-year arithmetic rule, which matches the official equinox-based calendar from 1925 to about 2088.