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How many days until St Patrick's Day?

St Patrick’s Day falls on .

Counted in your own time zone, .

St Patrick's Day is 17 March, every year — the traditional date of the saint's death, which is why it never moves.

A fixed date with one strange exception

17 March is fixed, but the celebration is occasionally not. When the date falls inside Holy Week, the Catholic church moves the feast — it happened in 2008, when it was marked on 15 March, and will not happen again until 2160. The parades stayed on the 17th regardless, which tells you which calendar most people are actually using.

Counting to a weekend again

Like Halloween, the real countdown is often to the nearest weekend rather than the date. Dublin's festival runs several days around it, and most cities schedule their parade for the closest Saturday or Sunday, so a countdown to the 17th can have you a few days out from the thing you meant to attend.

Further from Ireland than you would think

More people celebrate it outside Ireland than in it, and the largest parades are in New York, Boston and Chicago. If you are counting down to travel for one, that is a flight and a hotel in mid-March, which is exactly the kind of date worth having in front of you months out.

Questions

Is St Patrick's Day always 17 March?

Yes. The date is fixed, though the church has moved the feast once, in 2008, when it clashed with Holy Week.

How many days until St Patrick's Day?

The counter above shows it live and rolls to next year once the date has passed.

Is it a public holiday?

In the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, yes. Elsewhere it is widely celebrated but a normal working day.