Wheel of the Year 2026

The eight gates of the solar year

The Wheel of the Year is the modern pagan calendar, eight festivals spaced evenly around the year that mark the sun’s turning. Four are the solar quarters, the solstices and equinoxes; four are the cross-quarter fire festivals between them, the old Gaelic feasts of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh.

The wheel as a single eight-fold cycle is a twentieth-century creation, assembled in the 1950s and 60s by Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols from older, separate festivals. Some of its parts are genuinely ancient: the fire festivals have real roots in the Gaelic world, and the solstices were marked long before recorded history. Others, like the names Litha and Mabon, are recent inventions. We give each sabbat its own page, with the honest history of what is old and what is new.

What this calendar holds

The entries here are the eight sabbats in order, each a full account of the festival, its genuine roots, and what the modern wheel made of it. Together they form the best-known sacred calendar in modern paganism, a year turned like a wheel from one fire to the next.