When Is the Next Leap Year?

The next leap year is 2028 and the last was 2024, so 2026 is a common year of 365 days. The rule behind that is not simply every four years, and the exception is worth knowing.

Short version: the next leap year is 2028, and the leap day lands on Tuesday, 29 February 2028. The last one was 2024. That means 2025, 2026 and 2027 all run to a flat 365 days.

The longer version is more interesting, because the rule almost everyone learned at school is wrong in a way that will eventually bite.

The rule, including the part usually left out

A year is a leap year if it divides evenly by 4. That is the version most people know, and it gives the right answer for 397 years out of every 400.

The full rule has two more clauses. A year divisible by 100 is not a leap year, unless it is also divisible by 400, in which case it is.

So 2000 was a leap year, because 400 divides into it cleanly. 1900 was not. 2100 will not be either, and neither will 2200 or 2300. Then 2400 gets its leap day back.

Anyone who has written date handling code has met this the hard way. A calculator that only checks divisibility by 4 works perfectly until February 2100, at which point it quietly invents a day that does not exist. Every date tool on this site applies all three clauses, which is why 28 February 2100 plus one day returns 1 March here.

Which leap year gets skipped, and the 8 year gap

Because 2100 is skipped, the gap between two consecutive leap years is not always four years, which is a detail most explanations leave out entirely.

2096 is a leap year. 2100 is not. The next one after 2096 is 2104. That is an 8 year gap, the longest that occurs in the Gregorian calendar, and it happens three times in every four centuries.

It also explains a common half memory. People sometimes say leap years come every four or five years. The instinct that the spacing is not perfectly regular is correct. The number is just wrong: the irregular gap is 8 years, and the last one was 1896 to 1904.

Is this year a leap year?

Quick reference for the years either side of now, with the reason attached rather than just a yes or no.

None of the years in that window are century years, so the simple divisible by 4 test gives the right answer for all of them. The exceptions do not resurface until 2100.

Upcoming leap days and what weekday they fall on

Leap days do not cycle neatly through the week, because a leap year shifts the following year's weekdays by two rather than one.

That two day shift is also why your birthday jumps forward one weekday in most years and two whenever a leap day has passed in between.

Why any of this exists

Earth does not take a tidy 365 days to get around the Sun. It takes roughly 365.2422 days.

Ignore that quarter day and the calendar drifts about a day every four years. Left alone for a few centuries, the seasons slide: spring starts arriving in what the calendar insists is winter. This is not hypothetical, it is exactly what happened to the older Julian calendar, which added a leap day every four years with no exceptions and gained roughly three days every four centuries.

The Gregorian fix was to drop three leap days per 400 years. That gives an average year of 365.2425 days, which is within about half a minute of the real figure. Accurate enough that the drift takes thousands of years to matter.

What a leap year actually changes

The obvious answer is that February gets 29 days and the year gets 366. The knock on effects are where people get caught out.

• Any span crossing 29 February is one day longer than the same span in a common year, which matters for contracts, notice periods and interest calculations.
• Two years is 730 days normally and 731 if a leap day falls inside the window.
• Four consecutive years contain exactly 1,461 days, unless the span crosses a skipped century year, in which case it is 1,460.
• Weekday patterns shift by two days rather than one across a leap year, so annually recurring dates move differently.

If you need the exact figure for a specific span rather than a rule of thumb, the days between two dates calculator counts the real calendar including any leap days inside the range. The time unit converter handles the reverse case, turning months or years into days while showing both the average and the actual count.

The mistake to avoid

Treating a year as 365 days for anything longer than a couple of years introduces a slow, silent error. Over a decade you are out by two or three days, which is enough to move a contract date or a maturity date onto the wrong side of a month end.

The same applies in reverse to the shortcut of dividing by 365.25. That figure is the Julian average, not the Gregorian one, and it is the reason some spreadsheets disagree with each other about long date ranges. The correct average is 365.2425.

Frequently asked questions

When is the next leap year?

2028. The next leap day is Tuesday, 29 February 2028. The one before it was Thursday, 29 February 2024.

Is 2026 a leap year?

No. 2026 is not divisible by 4, so it is a common year of 365 days with no 29 February.

Is 2027 a leap year?

No. 2027 is a common year of 365 days. The next leap year after it is 2028.

Is 2028 a leap year?

Yes. 2028 is divisible by 4 and is not a century year, so it has 366 days and a leap day on Tuesday, 29 February.

When was the last leap year?

2024. The leap day fell on Thursday, 29 February 2024.

How often is a leap year?

Every four years, with one exception. Three out of every four century years are skipped, which is why the rule is not quite as simple as counting in fours.

Is a leap year every 4 or 5 years?

Every 4 years under normal circumstances. The idea that it is sometimes 5 usually comes from people noticing that the gap around a skipped century year is longer. That gap is 8 years, not 5.

How many days are in a leap year?

366 days, one more than a common year's 365. The extra day is 29 February.

Which leap year gets skipped next?

2100. It is divisible by 4 but not by 400, so it stays at 365 days. The same applies to 2200 and 2300. 2400 is divisible by 400, so it keeps its leap day.

Why do we have leap years at all?

Because a year is not a whole number of days. Earth takes roughly 365.2422 days to orbit the Sun, so a fixed 365 day calendar drifts by about a quarter of a day annually. Leap days absorb that drift.

What happens to people born on 29 February?

In common years they normally mark their birthday on either 28 February or 1 March, and which one is treated as official varies by country and by the specific rule being applied, whether that is driving age, legal majority or insurance. If a precise date matters legally, the answer depends on local law rather than on a universal convention.