What day is it today?
Today's date where you are, from your device's clock and time zone — with the week number, how far through the year we are, the moon, and who has a public holiday.
Calendar facts
- —ISO week (Monday start)
- —US week (Sunday start)
- —Day of the year
- —Days left this year
- —Of the year gone
- —Moon phase
How the date is worked out
A date is not a single global fact. At any moment the world spans two calendar days, and for two hours each day it spans three: when it is 11:30 in London, it is already tomorrow on Kiritimati in the central Pacific (UTC+14) and still yesterday on Baker Island (UTC−12). So this page starts from the one thing that is the same everywhere — the current instant — and converts it into a date using your device's time-zone setting, including any daylight-saving offset in force today.
Everything is calculated in your browser with the time-zone database built into it. The page does not ask for your location, does not use cookies, and does not send your time zone to us. The UTC line under the date is there as a reference: it is the date most servers, logs and many AI models use by default.
Week numbers
Two week-numbering systems are in common use and they disagree for part of the year. The ISO 8601 week starts on Monday, and week 1 is the week that contains the first Thursday of January — equivalently, the week with 4 January in it. A year therefore has 52 or 53 ISO weeks, and the first days of January can still belong to the last week of the previous year. The US convention starts weeks on Sunday and simply calls the week containing 1 January week 1. Planners, payroll systems and spreadsheets usually say which they mean; if not, European ones nearly always mean ISO. The week number page lists every week of the year with its dates.
Day of the year
The day of the year counts 1 January as day 1, so 31 December is day 365, or 366 in a leap year. Leap years are those divisible by 4, except century years that are not divisible by 400: 2000 and 2024 were leap years, 2100 will not be. The percentage shown is how much of the year has passed at the start of today. There is a full table on the day of the year page.
Public holidays today
The holiday list checks each of the 20 countries we cover against its own date, not yours: a holiday in New Zealand begins while it is still the previous evening in Europe. Substitute days off — when a holiday falls on a weekend and the day off moves — are marked, and so are holidays whose date depends on sighting the new moon. For China, weekend days that become working days under the official holiday arrangement are shown too. Each country page links to its government's own list, which is the one to trust when they disagree.
For programs and AI assistants
Language models often do not know today's date, and when they do it is usually the UTC date rather than the user's. The same facts on this page are available as JSON:
curl "https://whathappen.today/api/today?tz=Asia/Tokyo&country=JP"
The answer includes the local date, weekday, ISO week, day of the year, the moon phase, whether it is a public holiday, the next holiday, and a one-sentence summary an assistant can quote. An MCP endpoint at /mcp offers the same as tools. See the API and MCP documentation.
Questions and answers
How do you know what day it is for me?
Your browser reports its clock and its time zone setting (for example Europe/Berlin). The page turns the current instant into a calendar date in that zone, so nothing is looked up on a server and nothing about you is sent anywhere. If your device clock is wrong, the date shown here will be wrong too.
Why is the UTC date different from mine?
UTC is the reference clock the world's time zones are measured from. Between your local midnight and midnight in UTC the two dates differ: in Sydney or Tokyo you are a day ahead of UTC in the morning, and in New York or Los Angeles you are a day behind it in the evening.
Which week number is correct, ISO or US?
Both, under different rules. ISO 8601, used across Europe and in most software, starts weeks on Monday and counts the week containing the year's first Thursday as week 1. The common US convention starts on Sunday and counts the week containing 1 January as week 1. Near New Year they can be a week apart, and late December can even belong to ISO week 1 of the next year.
Does the page update at midnight?
Yes. The page checks the clock every second and redraws everything when your local date changes, so a tab left open overnight shows the new day without a reload.
How is the moon phase worked out?
From the positions of the Sun and Moon at local noon, using standard astronomical formulas. A day is labelled New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon or Last Quarter when that exact moment falls within your local day, the way printed calendars do; on other days you see the waxing or waning crescent or gibbous phase and the lit fraction of the disc.
Can a program or AI assistant get the same answer?
Yes. /api/today returns the same facts as JSON for any time zone and, with a country, the holiday status; the API page also explains the MCP endpoint for AI assistants. Both are free and need no key.
Dates and times depend on your device's clock and time-zone setting. Holiday information is for reference only and may change at short notice; confirm with the official source before booking travel or planning work.