Carnival Date (any year)

Flights, work rosters, guesthouse bookings: for all of that you need to know when Carnival falls, sometimes two or three years ahead. Type a year and the tool lists the four dates that matter: Carnival Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, plus Ash Wednesday, each with its weekday and month written out. It works for any year, past or future, and recalculates as you type the number.

There is no magic lookup table: Carnival derives from Easter. Carnival Tuesday falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, which in turn is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21. The tool computes Easter with the classic Gregorian algorithm and subtracts the days. Since Easter ranges from March 22 to April 25, Carnival Tuesday can land anywhere from February 3 to March 9, which is why some Carnivals come early and others run late.

A detail that surprises many visitors: Carnival is not a national holiday in Brazil. At the federal level, Monday and Tuesday are optional days off; Tuesday is a proper holiday only where state or city law says so (Rio de Janeiro, for example). Brazilian banks close on Monday and Tuesday and open at noon on Ash Wednesday. For payments and deadlines, check the local calendar. The math runs in your browser, no server involved.