How many days are in a year?

How many days are in a year?

A calendar year has 365 days, or 366 in a leap year. The extra day is February 29. Of the next five years, only 2028 is a leap year: 2026, 2027, 2029 and 2030 each have 365 days, and 2028 has 366.

The reason for leap years is that the seasons do not repeat in a whole number of days. You can see it in the equinox times the US Naval Observatory publishes. The March equinox lands at 14:46 UTC in 2026, 20:25 UTC in 2027, then 02:17 UTC on March 20, 2028. Each common year, it arrives almost six hours later on the clock. After four years that drift adds up to nearly a day, and the leap day in 2028 pulls it back. Without leap years, the calendar would slide against the seasons by about a day every four years.

What is the leap-year rule?

The Gregorian calendar, used in the United States, has three steps:

1. A year that divides evenly by 4 is a leap year (2028, 2032).
2. A year that divides by 100 is not a leap year (1900, 2100).
3. A year that divides by 400 is a leap year after all (2000, 2400).

The second and third steps fix a small overcorrection. Adding a day every four years is slightly too much, so three century years out of every four skip their leap day. That is why 2000 had a February 29 and 2100 will not. Our day-of-year tool and every counter on this site use this rule, so a count that crosses February 2028 includes the leap day automatically.

How many weeks are in a year?

52 weeks and 1 day in a common year, and 52 weeks and 2 days in a leap year. That leftover is easy to see on a calendar: a date falls one weekday later each year, and two weekdays later after a February 29. Halloween shows it. October 31 is a Saturday in 2026, a Sunday in 2027 and a Tuesday in 2028, skipping Monday because of the leap day.

Some years also have 53 ISO weeks. ISO weeks start on Monday and week 1 is the one that holds the year's first Thursday. Under that rule, Fri, Jan 1, 2027 belongs to week 53 of 2026, because the week it sits in has its Thursday in 2026.

How many business days are in a year?

Start with weekdays. A common year has 261 weekdays when it starts on a weekday, and 2028, a leap year starting on a Saturday, has 260. Then take out the federal holidays that land on weekdays, using the observed dates OPM publishes. The table above does that for 2026 to 2030. Most years come out at 250 business days.

2027 is the exception at 249. New Year's Day 2028 falls on a Saturday, so OPM observes it on Fri, Dec 31, 2027. That puts two New Year's holidays inside 2027, and leaves 2028 with only 10 federal holidays on weekdays.

Your employer's count may differ, since it can add its own days off. Federal Reserve Banks follow their own schedule, which keeps them open on the Friday before a Saturday holiday. The business days calculator lets you count with or without federal holidays, and the guide on business days explains the differences.

How many days are left this year?

Our day-of-year tool shows today's day number, the days left and the percentage of the year that is done. For a single date, the date calculator gives its weekday and day number. If you want the count to a specific day, every holiday and season page on this site has a live counter, and the days-between calculator handles any two dates.

Why do some sources say a year is 365.25 days?

That figure is the average length of the calendar year over a four-year cycle with one leap day: three years of 365 plus one of 366, divided by four. The Gregorian rule, with its century exceptions, brings the long-run average a little lower, to 365.2425 days. For counting days to a date, none of the averages matter. What matters is whether a February 29 sits between your two dates, and the calculators handle that for you.