Days Until Thanksgiving

US Thanksgiving is not a fixed date — it is the fourth Thursday of November, which is why it wanders between 22 and 28 November. This page computes the correct Thursday for the current year and counts down to it live.

That floating date is also why Thanksgiving week planning is tricky: flights peak the Wednesday before, and the length of the shopping season to Christmas changes by up to six days depending on the year. The table below gives the exact date for the next five years.

The American date has changed more than most people realise. Lincoln fixed it as the last Thursday in November in 1863; Roosevelt moved it a week earlier in 1939 to lengthen the shopping season, producing two rival dates and a good deal of anger, and Congress settled it as the fourth Thursday in 1941. That is why the date shifts between 22 and 28 November rather than being fixed.

Canada holds its Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October, and the earlier date is agricultural rather than arbitrary: the harvest finishes sooner at higher latitudes. Canadian observance also predates the American one, with celebrations recorded from Martin Frobisher's 1578 voyage.

The four-day weekend it creates is now the busiest travel period of the American year, and the two days that bracket it have acquired their own names and their own logistics. If you are counting toward it, the useful dates are usually the Wednesday before — the heaviest travel day — and the Monday after, rather than the Thursday itself.

Thanksgiving (US) — the next five years