Wheel of the Year 2027: All Eight Sabbat Dates in US Time

The eight sabbat dates for 2027

The four cross-quarter days are fixed by custom and fall on the same dates every year. The four solar sabbats are astronomical events that happen at one exact instant worldwide, so their calendar date depends on where you are standing. Both kinds are in the table below, with the solar moments converted to all four continental US time zones.

Wheel of the Year 2027 — northern hemisphere, US time zones

Sabbat	Type	Eastern	Central	Mountain	Pacific
Imbolc	Cross-quarter	Feb 1–2 (sundown Jan 31 to sundown Feb 2, by older reckoning)
Ostara	Spring equinox	Mar 20, 4:25 p.m.	Mar 20, 3:25 p.m.	Mar 20, 2:25 p.m.	Mar 20, 1:25 p.m.
Beltane	Cross-quarter	Apr 30–May 1 (eve on April 30, day on May 1)
Litha	Summer solstice	Jun 21, 10:11 a.m.	Jun 21, 9:11 a.m.	Jun 21, 8:11 a.m.	Jun 21, 7:11 a.m.
Lughnasadh	Cross-quarter	Aug 1 (also called Lammas)
Mabon	Autumn equinox	Sep 23, 2:01 a.m.	Sep 23, 1:01 a.m.	Sep 23, 12:01 a.m.	Sep 22, 11:01 p.m.
Samhain	Cross-quarter	Oct 31–Nov 1 (eve on October 31)
Yule	Winter solstice	Dec 21, 9:42 p.m.	Dec 21, 8:42 p.m.	Dec 21, 7:42 p.m.	Dec 21, 6:42 p.m.

Solar moments converted from UTC: March 20 at 20:25, June 21 at 14:11, September 23 at 06:01, December 22 at 02:42. Clock times account for daylight saving where it applies.
On precision: published sources for the 2027 solstices and equinoxes differ by one to three minutes, depending on the ephemeris used — the December solstice is variously given as 02:42, 02:42 or 02:45 UTC. Treat the clock times here as accurate to within a few minutes. None of that spread is anywhere near large enough to move a calendar date: Yule is roughly three hours clear of midnight in Eastern time, and the Pacific reading of Mabon about an hour clear.

Why two of these dates differ from British and European calendars

This is the part worth reading before you write anything in a planner, because it is the one thing almost every Wheel of the Year page gets structurally wrong for an American reader.

An equinox or solstice is a single instant — the moment the Sun reaches a particular point relative to Earth's axis. It happens at the same instant everywhere on the planet. What differs is the local clock reading at that instant, and therefore sometimes the date on the wall calendar.

In 2027 that produces two splits:

• Yule. The December solstice occurs at 02:42 UTC on December 22. In the United Kingdom, across Europe and anywhere else east of the Atlantic, that is December 22. In every one of the four continental US time zones it is still the evening of December 21. If you are following a British almanac or a Pinterest graphic made in Europe, it will tell you the twenty-second and it will be wrong for you.
• Mabon. The September equinox occurs at 06:01 UTC on September 23. That is still September 23 in Eastern, Central and Mountain time — just barely, in the small hours — but on the Pacific coast it falls at 11:01 p.m. on September 22. Mabon splits the country.

Ostara and Litha are uncontroversial in 2027: both fall comfortably in the middle of the American day and land on March 20 and June 21 everywhere in the country.

If you want to work with this yourself, this is what we use

When is Yule 2027?

December 21, 2027 in the United States — at about 9:42 p.m. Eastern, 8:42 p.m. Central, 7:42 p.m. Mountain and 6:42 p.m. Pacific. In UTC the same instant is 02:42 on December 22, which is why international calendars print the later date. Published sources differ by a minute or two on the exact instant; none of them puts it anywhere near midnight, so the US date is not in doubt.

This has a pleasant side effect: the exact moment of the solstice falls in the evening right across the country, which is an unusually convenient time to mark it. You can hold a candle at the actual turn rather than approximating it at breakfast.

When is Mabon 2027?

September 23, 2027 at about 2:01 a.m. Eastern for most of the country, but September 22 at about 11:01 p.m. Pacific. Mountain time gets it just after midnight on the twenty-third — by roughly a minute, which is the narrowest margin on the whole 2027 wheel.

Practically, almost nobody observes the autumn equinox at two in the morning. The usual approach is to keep it on the daylight side — the evening of the twenty-second or the day of the twenty-third, whichever suits. It is also worth knowing that Mabon is the youngest name on the wheel: it was not attached to this festival until 1974. We go into that history in how old Mabon actually is.

The four solar sabbats: the exact moment each season turns

Two solstices and two equinoxes, given as instants rather than days. At an equinox the Sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night are close to equal; at a solstice it reaches its furthest declination north or south and the length of daylight stops changing and reverses.

The four cross-quarter days: why their dates don't move

Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain sit roughly halfway between the solar events. In modern practice they are kept on fixed calendar dates — February 1, May 1, August 1 and November 1, usually beginning at sundown the evening before — rather than being calculated astronomically.

That is a choice, not an accident. The true astronomical midpoints drift by several days from the customary dates: the actual halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox falls in the first week of February, not on the first. Some practitioners keep those "astronomical cross-quarters" instead. The great majority keep the fixed dates, which is why every calendar you will find lists February 1 without further comment.

The two kinds of sabbat, side by side

	Solar sabbats	Cross-quarter days
Which ones	Ostara, Litha, Mabon, Yule	Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain
Date set by	Astronomy	Custom
Moves year to year	Yes, by a day or two	No
Depends on time zone	Yes — this is where Yule and Mabon split in 2027	No
Older roots	Germanic and Norse names; the events themselves marked at many prehistoric sites	Gaelic and Irish festival names attested in medieval sources

The wheel, drawn

Eight stations, four of them fixed and four of them calculated. The light half of the year runs from Imbolc up through Litha; the dark half from Lughnasadh down through Yule.

Wheel of the Year 2027 for the southern hemisphere

Below the equator the seasons are reversed, so the wheel is turned half a revolution. The astronomical moments are the same instants — the June solstice still happens on June 21 — but it is the winter solstice there, so it carries Yule rather than Litha. The cross-quarter days move by six months for the same reason.

Southern hemisphere sabbat dates, 2027

Sabbat	Southern date 2027	Northern date 2027
Lughnasadh	Feb 1	Aug 1
Mabon	Mar 20	Sep 23
Samhain	Apr 30–May 1	Oct 31–Nov 1
Yule	Jun 21	Dec 21
Imbolc	Aug 1	Feb 1–2
Ostara	Sep 23	Mar 20
Beltane	Oct 31–Nov 1	Apr 30–May 1
Litha	Dec 21	Jun 21

Australian and New Zealand dates need one more adjustment: those time zones are far enough east that a solar moment given in UTC can fall on the following day locally. The June solstice at 14:11 UTC is just past midnight on June 22 in Sydney.

Which dates change every year and which never do

A short answer for anyone building a recurring calendar entry: set the four cross-quarter days to repeat annually and leave them alone. February 1, May 1, August 1 and November 1 will be correct every year for the rest of your life.

The four solar dates need checking each year. They drift within a two-day window — the December solstice falls on the 21st or 22nd, the March equinox on the 19th, 20th or 21st — because the tropical year is about 365.2422 days and the calendar rounds. The leap-year cycle pulls the dates back and they creep forward again over the following three years.

Where the eight-festival wheel actually comes from

Worth knowing if you want to keep it honestly, and it is the part most 2027 date pages leave out entirely.

The eight-spoked wheel as a single system is modern. It was assembled in the mid-twentieth century, largely through the exchange between Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols in 1950s and 1960s Britain, by combining two sets of four: the Gaelic fire festivals — Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain, which are genuinely attested in medieval Irish sources — with the solstices and equinoxes, which were marked in many places but not as part of that Gaelic scheme.

The names come from several traditions at once. Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain are Irish. Yule and Ostara are Germanic. Litha appears in Bede's account of the Anglo-Saxon months. Mabon is Welsh in origin but was only applied to the autumn equinox in 1974, by Aidan Kelly. No historical culture celebrated these eight, under these names, in this arrangement.

That does not make the wheel less useful. It makes it a modern devotional calendar with old materials in it — which is a perfectly good thing to be, and a better description than the "ancient Celtic calendar" claim you will see repeated. For the longer version, see all eight sabbats explained.

What each sabbat is for, in one line

• Imbolc — the first stirring. Cleaning, lighting, naming what you intend to grow.
• Ostara — balance and beginning. Planting, in the literal and the other sense.
• Beltane — heat and appetite. Fire, union, going outside.
• Litha — the height. Gathering herbs, staying up, noticing the peak while it is happening.
• Lughnasadh — first harvest. Bread, the first return on something you started.
• Mabon — balance again, going the other way. Thanks and accounting.
• Samhain — the dead and the year's end. Ancestors, endings, the empty chair. Our step-by-step Samhain ritual covers this one in full.
• Yule — the turn in the dark. Light held through the longest night; see winter solstice rituals.

Practically: how to plan a year around eight dates

1. Put all eight in your calendar now, in one sitting. Twenty minutes in advance beats eight separate moments of realising it was yesterday. Set the cross-quarters to repeat yearly; set the four solar ones for 2027 only.
2. Add a reminder three days before each. The reason sabbats get missed is not forgetting the date — it is remembering on the day, with nothing in the house.
3. Pick a scale and keep it. Eight full rituals a year is more than most people sustain. One candle and ten minutes, eight times, beats two elaborate observances and six skipped ones.
4. Note the two odd ones for 2027. Yule is the evening of December 21, not the 22nd. Mabon is the night of September 22 if you are on the Pacific coast.
5. Write one line afterwards. By the following Imbolc you will have eight lines and a far better sense of which of these dates actually does something for you.

If you are planning the whole of 2027 rather than the eight sabbats alone, the 2027 full moon calendar and the 2027 Mercury retrograde dates are the companion pages to this one. For what to burn at the three dark-half festivals, we keep a separate guide to incense and herbs for Mabon, Samhain and Yule.

Which sabbat should you actually start with?

Three questions, no scoring hidden anywhere, nothing stored. If eight feels like too many to take on at once, this points at one.

What people report, and what that is worth

No invented names or star ratings here. What we can report honestly is the pattern in what people tell us about keeping the wheel, which is consistent enough to be worth writing down.

The most common thing people say is that the calendar did something the individual rituals did not: eight fixed points turned out to be a way of noticing a year passing rather than losing it. That comes up far more often than any claim about a particular sabbat working.

The second is that people keep fewer than eight. Most settle into three or four that matter to them — very often Samhain, Yule and one of the spring dates — and mark the others in passing or not at all. People who try to keep all eight fully in their first year mostly report keeping none by the third.

The third is the practical one, and it is why the tip above exists: the sabbats that get missed are missed for want of a reminder, not for want of intent.

What we don't promise

• The dates are astronomy and custom; the meanings are tradition. The solstice and equinox times are calculated and checkable to the minute. What the eight festivals signify is an interpretive tradition, and we present it as one.
• The wheel is not ancient as a system. It is a twentieth-century assembly of older parts. Anyone presenting it as an unbroken Celtic inheritance is overstating the case.
• No outcomes. Keeping a sabbat does not produce results in your life, and nothing sold here changes that.
• No health claims. Nothing on this page is medical or psychological advice.
• Check your own longitude. The times given are for the continental United States. Hawaii, Alaska and anywhere outside North America need their own conversion.

The first harvest spoke now has its own guide: how to celebrate Lughnasadh, with the traditional August 1 date set against the astronomical cross-quarter for 2026 to 2028 and six things to do on the day.

Frequently asked questions

What are the Wheel of the Year 2027 dates?

Imbolc February 1–2, Ostara March 20, Beltane April 30–May 1, Litha June 21, Lughnasadh August 1, Mabon September 23 (September 22 in Pacific time), Samhain October 31–November 1, and Yule December 21 in US time zones.

When is Yule 2027?

December 21, 2027 in the United States, at about 9:42 p.m. Eastern and 6:42 p.m. Pacific. The same instant is roughly 02:42 UTC on December 22, which is why British and European calendars give the twenty-second. Published times differ by a minute or two between sources; the date does not.

When is Samhain 2027?

October 31 to November 1, 2027, as every year. Samhain is a cross-quarter day kept on a fixed date, traditionally beginning at sundown on October 31. It does not move and does not depend on your time zone.

Why do some calendars say Yule is December 22 in 2027?

Because they are giving the date in UTC or in a European time zone. The solstice is a single worldwide instant — 02:42 UTC on December 22 — which falls on the evening of December 21 everywhere in the continental United States. Both dates describe the same moment.

What are the cross-quarter days?

Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain — the four sabbats that fall roughly halfway between the solstices and equinoxes. In modern practice they are kept on fixed dates (February 1, May 1, August 1, November 1) rather than calculated astronomically, so they never change.

What are the Wheel of the Year 2027 dates for the southern hemisphere?

Lughnasadh February 1, Mabon March 20, Samhain April 30–May 1, Yule June 21, Imbolc August 1, Ostara September 23, Beltane October 31–November 1, and Litha December 21. The astronomical moments are identical; the seasons they mark are reversed.

Is the Wheel of the Year an ancient Celtic calendar?

Not as an eight-festival system. Four of the names — Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain — are genuinely attested in medieval Irish sources, and the solstices were marked at prehistoric sites across Europe. But the eight combined into one wheel is a mid-twentieth-century construction, and Mabon was only given that name in 1974.

Do the sabbat dates change every year?

The four cross-quarter days never change. The four solar sabbats shift within a two-day window, because the tropical year is about 365.2422 days long and the calendar has to round. Check the solstices and equinoxes each year; set the cross-quarters once and leave them.

Sources and further reading

• 2027 equinox and solstice moments, computed to the second as March 20 at 20:24:43 UTC, June 21 at 14:10:33, September 23 at 06:01:18 and December 22 at 02:42:18, and converted here to US time zones with daylight saving applied. Cross-checked against timeanddate.com’s seasons calendar; published values across sources span one to three minutes, which never moves a 2027 calendar date.
• Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996) — the standard scholarly account of which festival traditions are attested and which are modern.
• Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999, 2nd ed. 2019) — on the mid-twentieth-century assembly of the eight-fold wheel.
• On the 1974 coining of "Mabon" for the autumn equinox: Aidan Kelly has described the naming in his own published accounts; see also our own write-up on Mabon's age.
• Bede, De temporum ratione (725) — the source for the Anglo-Saxon month names behind Litha and the Eostre reference behind Ostara.

For the rest of the 2027 sky in the same format, we keep a full moon calendar for 2027. If you are putting a seasonal shelf together, the books we keep for seasonal practice and the candles we burn at the eight are both in the shop — though a single candle you already own will do for any sabbat on this page.