Esoteric Calendar
Zoroastrian Calendar 2026
Nowruz, Gahanbars, sacred fire festivals, and the oldest living liturgical calendar.
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
The oldest liturgical year still kept
Zoroastrianism may hold the oldest religious calendar still in daily use. Its year is built around fire and the seasons, and around a set of named days: every day of the month and every month carries the name of a divine being, a yazata, and when the day-name and the month-name coincide the result is a Jashan, a feast in that being’s honour.
The year’s great structure is the six Gahanbars, seasonal festivals that celebrate the creation of sky, water, earth, plants, animals, and humankind in turn. Nowruz, the new year at the spring equinox, is the best known and most widely kept, a festival far older than the modern Iranian state that still observes it. Fire stands at the centre throughout, honoured in rites like the Three Great Fires, the legendary sacred fires of priest, warrior, and farmer.
What this calendar holds
One complication is built in. Zoroastrian communities never fully agreed on a single reckoning after the fall of the Persian empire, so several calendars (Fasli, Shahanshahi, and Qadimi) run a month or so apart, and the dates here follow one of them. Behind the variation is a liturgical year three thousand years deep, still turning on its sacred fires and the long war of light against the dark.