Shrove Tuesday date
Enter a year to get the date of Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras: in 2026 it falls on 17 February, the day before Ash Wednesday and 47 days before Easter Sunday. Plan parades, pancake days and school events ahead. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Year
- 2,026
- Date
- 2026-02-17
- Month
- 2
- Day
- 17
Shrove Tuesday, widely called Mardi Gras, is the final day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent in the Western Christian calendar. Its date changes every year because it is tied to Easter rather than to a fixed day of the month. Enter a Gregorian calendar year to receive the exact Shrove Tuesday date as an ISO-formatted value with separate numeric components. The calculation uses only deterministic integer arithmetic, so it does not depend on a device clock, server time zone, locale, network service, or stored holiday table.
How the Shrove Tuesday date is determined
Shrove Tuesday is the day immediately before Ash Wednesday. In the Western Christian calendar, Ash Wednesday is 46 calendar days before Easter Sunday, while Shrove Tuesday is therefore 47 calendar days before Easter Sunday. The apparent difference between the forty days of Lent and this longer calendar interval comes from the Sundays within Lent, which are counted in the calendar span but traditionally excluded from the forty days of fasting.
This calculator first finds Easter Sunday with the Anonymous Gregorian computus, often associated with Meeus, Jones, and Butcher. It then moves backward exactly 47 calendar days using Gregorian month lengths and the complete century rule for leap years. That approach covers the full movable range without a table of known holidays.
Since Gregorian Easter falls between March 22 and April 25, Shrove Tuesday falls in February or March of the same year. The calculation is ecclesiastical rather than astronomical: it follows the standardized Gregorian rule used for Western Easter instead of consulting live observations of the moon.
Calling the calculator and interpreting its response
Send one required field named year as an integer greater than or equal to 1. The string is convenient for databases, configuration files, and comparisons, while the separate components are useful when a program needs to construct labels or calendar entries. The returned date represents a civil calendar day, not an instant during that day.
If your application needs a timestamp, choose an explicit time and zone after receiving the calendar date rather than assuming midnight has one universal local meaning.
Planning Mardi Gras, calendars, and related observances
The result can anchor many schedules that use different names for the same day. Shrove Tuesday is associated with confession, preparation, pancakes, carnival celebrations, and the final festivities of Mardi Gras season, but customs and event durations vary by place. This capability answers the narrow calendar question: which Gregorian date is the Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday in the requested year.
Event organizers can use it to set registration deadlines, parade dates, catering plans, school activities, or publishing schedules. When building a broader liturgical calendar, calculate this date once and derive nearby observances carefully according to the rules your organization follows. Do not assume that every carnival event happens only on Tuesday, or that Shrove Tuesday is a statutory public holiday in every jurisdiction.
Legal closures, business hours, and local celebration schedules should be maintained as separate policy data even when they use this computed date as their reference point.
What you can do with it
Build annual church calendars
Place Shrove Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday in parish, school, and community calendars without maintaining a manual list of dates.
Plan Mardi Gras events
Anchor parade, hospitality, staffing, publishing, and registration schedules to the correct final Tuesday before Lent.
FAQ
Are Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras the same date?
Yes. Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday and refers to the same Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday, although local carnival seasons may include events on many additional days.
How is Shrove Tuesday calculated?
The capability computes Gregorian Easter Sunday with the Anonymous Gregorian computus and subtracts exactly 47 calendar days.
Does this calculate Orthodox Shrove Tuesday?
No. It follows the Gregorian Easter rule used by Western churches. Calendars based on Orthodox Easter may produce a different date and require a different computus.
In which months can Shrove Tuesday fall?
Always in February or March. Western Easter falls between 22 March and 25 April, and Shrove Tuesday comes 47 calendar days earlier, so it never leaves those two months.
Why is it 47 days before Easter when Lent lasts forty days?
Because the Sundays of Lent count in the calendar span but are traditionally left out of the forty fasting days. Ash Wednesday is 46 days before Easter, and Shrove Tuesday is the day before it.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/shrove-tuesday \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"year":2026}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/shrove-tuesday", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"year": 2026
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/shrove-tuesday",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"year": 2026
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/shrove-tuesday", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"year":2026}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"year":2026}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/date/shrove-tuesday", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"year": 2026
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "date.shrove_tuesday",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
Calling the calculator and interpreting its response
A successful response returns date in YYYY-MM-DD form together with year, month, and day as numbers. Missing values, fractional numbers, nonnumeric text, and years below 1 produce an invalid_input error rather than a plausible-looking result. The API price is $0.002 per successful item, and the browser version can be used for quick interactive checks.
Integration use cases
Generate deterministic holiday data
Create repeatable multi-year calendar fixtures for applications and reports without network calls, local time-zone shifts, or external holiday tables.
Technical questions
Does the calculation depend on my time zone?
No. It returns a Gregorian calendar date produced by pure arithmetic, with no system clock, Date object, locale, or time-zone conversion.
What does the API cost?
The API costs $0.002 per successful item. You can also use the in-browser calculator for an interactive one-off result.