Esoteric Calendar
Islamic & Sufi Calendar 2026
Sacred months, holy nights, and Sufi devotional observances.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Cyclical Rhythms
These cycles repeat throughout the year. Their dates shift with the moon and stars.
Browse by Tradition
A purely lunar year, and its inner nights
The Islamic calendar is the strict lunar one. Twelve lunar months make a year about eleven days shorter than the solar one, so every festival travels backward through the seasons, completing a full circuit over roughly thirty-three years. Ramadan can fall in winter or high summer depending on the decade.
The year’s pillars are well known: the fast of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr that ends it, the month of Hajj with its Day of Arafah and Eid al-Adha, and the sacred month of Muharram with the Day of Ashura. Over these run the holy nights, above all Isra and Mi’raj, the night of the Prophet’s ascension, and Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power within Ramadan.
The Sufi layer
The Sufi orders add their own observances over this shared frame: the urs, the death-anniversary of a saint kept as a wedding with the divine, retreats like the forty-day Khalwa, and the birthdays of the great masters. The calendar holds both, the public pillars of the Islamic year and the inner, devotional nights the Sufis have read within them.