What is today’s date?

Today’s date, always up to date

The date at the top of this page comes from the clock of your phone or computer, in your time zone. It is calculated in your browser when the page opens, and it changes by itself at midnight, so you can leave the page open on a screen as a big calendar display. Press F for full screen: the day and the date stay large and everything else fades away.

Under the date you get the facts people usually look up next: the day number of the year (useful for logs, labels and Julian-style dates), the week number, how many days are left until December 31, and whether today is a public holiday in your country, with the next one.

How to write today’s date

The same day is written in very different ways depending on the country. In the United States the month comes first (11/08/2026), in the United Kingdom and most of the world the day comes first (08/11/2026), and in Japan or China the year comes first. That is why “03/04” means March 4 to an American and 3 April to a Briton. The table below shows today’s date in each style; it updates with your clock.

When a date has to be read by people in several countries, or sorted by a computer, the safest choice is the ISO 8601 format: year, month, day, with hyphens (2026-11-08). Files named that way sort themselves in the right order. In a letter or an email, spelling out the month (“November 8, 2026”) removes any doubt.

Commas and ordinals in US English

In American style, write “Sunday, November 8, 2026”, with a comma after the weekday and after the day number. When the year falls in the middle of a sentence, a second comma follows it: “The meeting on November 8, 2026, was moved.” Ordinals like “November 8th” are fine in speech and casual writing, but style guides prefer the plain number in formal text.

Day of the year, week number and days left

A regular year has 365 days and a leap year 366. January 1 is day 1 and December 31 is day 365 (or 366). The day number is handy for shipping codes, laboratory logs, batch numbers or simply to see how far into the year you are. In a regular year, July 2 is day 183, roughly the middle of the year.

The week number on this page follows the US convention: weeks run Sunday to Saturday and week 1 is the week that contains January 1. Much of Europe uses ISO weeks instead (Monday to Sunday, week 1 contains the first Thursday), so the two numbers can differ by one. The week number tool shows both, for any date.

Leap years

A year is a leap year if it can be divided by 4, except century years, which must be divisible by 400. So 2024 and 2028 are leap years, 2026 and 2027 are not, 2000 was one and 2100 will not be. In a leap year, February has 29 days and every date after February 28 has a day number one higher than usual.

Why the date is not the same everywhere

The date changes at midnight local time, and midnight sweeps around the planet over about 26 hours. The first places to start a new day are the Line Islands of Kiribati (UTC+14); the last are Baker Island and Howland Island (UTC−12), uninhabited US territories. For a few hours every day, three different dates are in use at the same time somewhere on Earth. When it is 8 PM on Sunday in Los Angeles, it is already Monday in London, Paris and Tokyo. To see the time and date in another city, open the world clock.

More about today

• Holidays: the line under the date tells you if today is a public holiday in the country you pick, and which is the next one. The full list is on the public holidays page.
• Calendar: see the whole month or year at a glance, and print it, with the calendar.
• Counting days: how many days until a date, or what date it will be in 90 days? Use the date calculator.
• The time: the exact time to the second is on the online clock.