Orthodox Easter vs Western Easter: Why the Two Dates Differ

A team with offices in Munich and Athens can lose working days to Easter twice in the same spring. In 2027, Western Easter falls on 28 March and Orthodox Easter on 2 May, five weeks later. Each office closes for its own Good Friday and Easter Monday, and each is working while the other is off. The reason goes back to a calendar reform in 1582.

The same rule, two calendars

Both traditions agree on the basic principle: Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. The difference is in how that rule is calculated.

• Western churches, and the public holiday calendars of most of Western and Central Europe, the Americas and Australia, use the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582, with a fixed equinox date of 21 March and a set of lunar tables adjusted at the same time.
• Orthodox churches calculate Easter on the older Julian calendar, also with a fixed equinox of 21 March, but 21 March in the Julian calendar is currently 3 April in the Gregorian one. They also use the older lunar tables. The result is then converted to the Gregorian date that appears in civil calendars.

The gap between the two calendars is currently 13 days, and it will grow to 14 days from March 2100. Because the Orthodox calculation starts from a later equinox and uses older moon tables that now run a few days behind the real moon, Orthodox Easter is never earlier than Western Easter. It is either the same Sunday or later.

How far apart can they be?

Three outcomes are possible:

• The same day. This happened in 2025 and will happen again in 2028, when both fall on 16 April.
• One week apart. In 2026 Western Easter was 5 April and Orthodox Easter 12 April.
• Four or five weeks apart. In 2027, 28 March and 2 May.

Over the current century, Western Easter falls between 22 March and 25 April, and Orthodox Easter, expressed in Gregorian dates, between 4 April and 8 May.

Where Orthodox Easter sets the holidays

Countries with Orthodox Christian majorities typically base their Easter public holidays on the Orthodox date. Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, North Macedonia and Georgia are among them. Exactly which days are holidays differs: some give Good Friday, some Easter Monday, many both. A few countries with mixed populations recognise both Easters in some form. Always check each country's official list, because the details change and regional rules can apply.

Easter also anchors other moveable days. In Greece and Cyprus, Clean Monday, the start of Orthodox Lent, falls 48 days before Orthodox Easter. Pentecost or Holy Spirit Monday falls 50 days after. When the two Easters are five weeks apart, every one of these related days is five weeks apart as well.

Worked example: Munich and Athens in spring 2027

Take a project team split between Germany and Greece. Germany's nationwide Easter-related holidays are Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day and Whit Monday, all based on Western Easter. Greece's are based on Orthodox Easter.

Count the weekdays where at least one office is closed: 8. Count the weekdays where both are closed: 0. Each office loses four weekdays in this window, but the team as a whole has eight days on which it is not at full strength. If the project needs both offices present for reviews or handovers, those eight days are effectively unavailable for joint work.

Compare 2028, when both Easters fall on 16 April. Good Friday and Easter Monday coincide, so they overlap entirely. The same team loses far fewer joint days. The difference between the two years is purely calendrical, which is why spring capacity plans should be rebuilt each year rather than copied forward.

Germany's calendar also has regional layers, such as Corpus Christi in several states, which this example leaves out. You can see the full list on the Germany public holidays page, and the 2027 long weekends in Germany page shows how the Western Easter dates turn into four-day weekends.

Beyond the office calendar

The two Easters affect more than desk staff. In Orthodox countries, Holy Week is one of the busiest travel periods of the year, as people head to family homes, so flights, ferries and accommodation fill early and many small businesses close for longer than the official holidays. Schools often take a spring break tied to the Orthodox date, which pulls parents onto leave in the same weeks. In years when the two Easters are far apart, a company with staff in both traditions sees two separate waves of leave requests, each with its own school holiday peak. Plan cover for both, and do not assume the quiet week in late March is the only one.

Why not just pick one date?

There have been repeated discussions between churches about a common Easter date, and the coincidence in 2025 revived them. Nothing has changed in the public holiday calendars yet. Until a change is formally adopted and governments update their holiday laws, plan on two separate dates.

What to do next

1. List every country your team works in and note whether its Easter holidays follow the Western or Orthodox date.
2. Add the related moveable days, such as Clean Monday, Ascension and Pentecost Monday, where they apply.
3. Count the days where at least one location is closed, not just each location's own total. The team overlap planner shows this directly.
4. Recheck each spring: the two Easters can be together one year and five weeks apart the next.
5. Use the business days calculator for each country before committing to deadlines in March, April and May.