What Year Is It in Ethiopia? Ethiopian Calendar Converter

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• The Battle of Adwa (March 1, 1896): Yekatit 23, 1888, the date Ethiopia still marks as Adwa Victory Day.
• The Ethiopian Millennium (Meskerem 1, 2000): September 12, 2007, a day later than most New Years because 2008 was a Gregorian leap year.
• Haile Selassie's coronation (November 2, 1930): Tikimt 23, 1923.
• Genna, Ethiopian Christmas (Tahsas 29, 2019): Thursday, January 7, 2027.

What year is it in Ethiopia?

It is 2019 in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian year 2019 runs from September 11, 2026 to September 11, 2027, and it is a leap year, so Pagume has 6 days. On this date the Ethiopian year is 7 behind the Gregorian year, as it is from Enkutatash, the Ethiopian New Year, on September 11, 2026 until December 31.

The Ethiopian New Year, Enkutatash, falls on September 11, or on September 12 when the next Gregorian year is a leap year. These are the next ones:

The 13 months of the Ethiopian calendar

The Ethiopian year has twelve months of exactly 30 days and a short thirteenth month, Pagume, of 5 days, or 6 in a leap year. These are the months of 2019 and the Gregorian dates they cover:

Because every month but the last has 30 days, each month begins on the same Gregorian date every year, give or take a day around leap years. Spellings of the month names in the Latin alphabet vary: Tikimt is also written Tekemt or Tikemt, and Tir is also written Ter.

Why is Ethiopia 7 or 8 years behind?

Both calendars count from the birth of Jesus, but they place it in different years. The Gregorian count goes back to Dionysius Exiguus, a monk in sixth-century Rome. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church follows an earlier Alexandrian calculation, attributed to Annianus of Alexandria, which places the Incarnation seven to eight years later. So the Ethiopian year number is 8 behind the Gregorian one from January 1 to Enkutatash in September, and 7 behind from Enkutatash to December 31.

The months come from the Coptic calendar of Egypt, which has the same twelve 30-day months, the same short thirteenth month and the same leap rule. Only the year number differs: the Coptic calendar counts from AD 284, so its years are 276 lower than the Ethiopian ones.

Leap years and Pagume 6

Every fourth Ethiopian year is a leap year, with no exceptions: the years that leave a remainder of 3 when divided by 4, such as 2015, 2019 and 2023. The extra day is Pagume 6, at the very end of the year, so the following Enkutatash moves from September 11 to September 12, just before a Gregorian leap day. The Gregorian calendar skips the leap day in 2100, 2200 and 2300, and the Ethiopian calendar does not, so from March 2100 every Ethiopian date falls one Gregorian day later and Enkutatash moves to September 12, or September 13 before a leap year.

Ethiopian time of day

Ethiopians also count the hours differently. The day starts at dawn, not midnight, so the clock reads 12 at what a Western clock calls 6 in the morning, 1 at 7 a.m., and 6 at noon. The night hours start again at 1 at 7 p.m. Ethiopian time is the Western 12-hour time minus six hours, which is why a meeting time in Addis Ababa is worth checking twice. This calculator converts dates only.

How it works

The converter turns a date into a day count (its Julian Day Number) and reads the same day back in the other calendar. Ethiopian year 1 began on August 29, AD 8 in the Julian calendar, and each Ethiopian year is 365 days plus a leap day every fourth year. Gregorian dates run from 1583, the first full year of the Gregorian calendar, to 9999. The answers were checked against Python's date library and against known dates: the Ethiopian Millennium on September 12, 2007, Adwa on Yekatit 23, 1888, and Enkutatash 2016 on September 12, 2023. "Today" uses the date in Addis Ababa, three hours ahead of UTC.

Related tools

To find the weekday of any date, including Julian dates before 1582, use the day of the week calculator. To count the years between two dates across BC and AD, use the BC/AD years calculator. To see which years are Gregorian leap years, use the leap year calculator.

Ethiopian history on a timeline

Dates from two calendars are easier to follow once they sit on one scale. To lay out events like Adwa and the coronation at their true distance apart, Preceden can put them on a timeline.