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Is 2026 a leap year? No

2026 is not a leap year. The next leap year is 2028.

The next February 29 is in 475 days (Tuesday, February 29, 2028). 2026 has 365 days.

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2026 is not a leap year

  1. Enter a year to see each step of the rule applied to it.

The leap year rule

In the Gregorian calendar, a year is a leap year if it is exactly divisible by 4, except for years exactly divisible by 100; those century years are leap years only if they are also exactly divisible by 400. So 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, and 2000 was (U.S. Naval Observatory).

  1. Not divisible by 4: a common year of 365 days (2026, 2027).
  2. Divisible by 4 but not by 100: a leap year of 366 days (2024, 2028).
  3. Divisible by 100 but not by 400: a common year (1900, 2100).
  4. Divisible by 400: a leap year (2000, 2400).

That makes 97 leap years in every 400, for an average year of 365.2425 days. In a spreadsheet, =OR(AND(MOD(A1,4)=0,MOD(A1,100)<>0),MOD(A1,400)=0) returns TRUE for a leap year in A1.

Julian and Gregorian leap years

The Julian calendar, in use from 45 BC, added February’s extra day in every year divisible by 4 and in no other. Its 365.25-day average is about 11 minutes longer than the year of the seasons, a full day in roughly 130 years, so by the 1500s the astronomical spring equinox no longer fell on March 21, the date the church’s Easter rules assigned to it (USNO, Encyclopedia Virginia).

Pope Gregory XIII’s reform of 1582 dropped ten days and introduced the century exception. Britain and its colonies adopted it in 1752, when eleven days were dropped because 1700 had been a leap year under the old rule but not the new (Calendar (New Style) Act 1750). Some churches still use the Julian calendar to set their feast days, which is why their Christmas, December 25 in the Julian calendar, falls on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar in this century.

List of leap years

Every leap year from 1904 to 2096, then the first ones after the skipped century year 2100:

After 2096: 2104, 2108, 2112, 2116, 2120. The years 1900 and 2100 are not leap years; 2000 was.

February 29 and leap day birthdays

February 29 is the 60th day of a leap year, and every date after it is one day later in the year’s count than in a common year: December 31 is day 366. The extra day also shifts weekdays. A date moves one weekday later from one year to the next, but two when February 29 comes in between; the day of the week calculator shows this for any date.

Someone born on February 29 has a calendar birthday only in leap years. In other years most people celebrate on February 28 or March 1. When a deadline or contract is counted in years from February 29, date arithmetic usually lands on February 28 in a common year, as the days from today calculator does; check the rule that governs the deadline.

Leap seconds are something else

Leap seconds keep clocks, not calendars, in step with nature. Atomic time runs perfectly evenly, but the Earth’s rotation does not, so from 1972 an extra second was added to UTC whenever the difference between UTC and UT1, the time set by the Earth’s rotation, approached 0.9 seconds. The first was added on June 30, 1972 and the most recent at the end of December 31, 2016; there have been 27 in all, every one of them positive, written 23:59:60 (NIST).

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service decides them and announces each one in its Bulletin C. Its July 2026 bulletin confirms that no leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026, and that UTC stays 37 seconds behind International Atomic Time (IERS Bulletin C 72).

Leap seconds are on their way out. In 2022 the General Conference on Weights and Measures decided that the maximum allowed difference between UT1 and UTC will be increased in, or before, 2035, with a new limit meant to keep UTC continuous for at least a century, because the jumps risk causing serious malfunctions in satellite navigation, telecommunications and energy networks, and because the Earth’s recent rotation suggested that the first negative leap second might be needed (CGPM 2022, Resolution 4).

Questions about leap years

When is the next leap year?

Leap years come every four years in this century: 2024, 2028, 2032 and so on to 2096. The year 2100 is not a leap year, so after 2096 the next is 2104.

Is 2100 a leap year?

No. 2100 is divisible by 100 but not by 400, so under the Gregorian rule it is a common year, like 1700, 1800 and 1900. The year 2000 was a leap year because it is divisible by 400.

Why do we have leap years?

The year of the seasons is close to 365¼ days, not 365. A calendar of 365-day years would slip against the seasons by about 24 days a century, so that within a few hundred years the northern spring would start in what the calendar calls winter. The Gregorian refinement, skipping three leap days every 400 years, keeps the average year at 365.2425 days.

When do people born on February 29 celebrate their birthday?

In common years most choose February 28 or March 1. Where the exact date matters legally, such as reaching an age limit, the answer depends on the law of the place concerned, so check the local rule.

Is a leap second the same as a leap day?

No. A leap day keeps the calendar in step with the seasons and follows a fixed rule. A leap second kept clock time in step with the Earth’s irregular rotation and was announced months ahead by the IERS; none has been added since the end of 2016.

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