Islamic Calendar 2027: Key Dates and Hijri Months

Two, and they hand over in June. The Gregorian year 2027 opens on 23 Rajab 1448 and closes on 3 Shaʿbān 1449 — so no single AH year fits inside it.

• 1448 AH began on 16 June 2026 and ends on Saturday 5 June 2027. It is a 355-day year.
• 1449 AH begins on Sunday 6 June 2027 and runs to 24 May 2028. It is a 354-day year.

A lunar year of twelve months comes to 354 or 355 days, which is about eleven days shorter than a Gregorian year. One consequence is quietly useful to know: 365 days are long enough to hold thirteen Hijri month-beginnings. In 2027 you will see the first of a new Islamic month thirteen times, starting with Shaʿbān in January and ending with Shaʿbān again in December.

Every date below is the Umm al-Qura calculation — the Saudi civil calendar, computed from astronomical tables and published years in advance. It is the reference most apps and almanacs use, Itabah included, because it is the only Hijri calendar that can be printed ahead of time at all.

Note what the lengths tell you. A Hijri month is never 28 or 31 days — it is 29 or 30, because it tracks one full cycle of the moon, roughly 29.53 days. That is also why no fixed rule can predict them: the pattern of 29s and 30s shifts from year to year.

These are the days most people are actually searching a calendar for. Again, Umm al-Qura — and again, read the sunset rule into each one: the night of 27 Ramaḍān, for instance, is the night that begins on the evening of 5 March.

Two of those carry a specific reported reward. Abū Qatādah (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that the Prophet ﷺ was asked about fasting the Day of ʿArafah and said it expiates the year before and the year after, and about fasting ʿĀshūrāʾ, and said it expiates the year before (Sahih Muslim 1162). In 2027 that places ʿArafah on a Saturday and ʿĀshūrāʾ on a Tuesday — both easy days to plan a fast around.

Because it is lunar and makes no attempt to be anything else. Twelve lunar months come to about 354.37 days against the solar year's 365.24, leaving a gap of roughly eleven days that is never patched. No leap month is inserted — and that refusal is deliberate.

The crescent is described as a mīqāt — an appointed measure — and Sūrat Yūnus adds that the moon's phases exist so “that you may know the number of years and the reckoning” (10:5). A calendar read off the sky is visible to a shepherd and a sailor alike, with no almanac and no authority required.

You can watch the drift in a single pair of dates. Ramaḍān 1448 opens on 8 February 2027; Ramaḍān 1449 opens on 28 January 2028 — eleven days earlier. Keep going and the month travels through every season and back again in roughly 33 years, which is why a Muslim who lives a long life fasts the longest summer days and the shortest winter ones.

This is the single most common frustration with any published Islamic calendar, and it has a clean explanation. Two legitimate methods are in use, and they do not always agree.

The Umm al-Qura calendar is calculated. An astronomical rule decides, years ahead, whether a month has 29 or 30 days — which is what makes a table like the one above possible. Most national committees, by contrast, hold to actual crescent sighting: observers look on the 29th evening, and the month either ends or runs a thirtieth day.

Only four months really turn on an announcement, because only four carry a date people must act on: Ramaḍān, Shawwāl (Eid al-Fiṭr), Dhū al-Ḥijjah (Hajj and Eid al-Aḍḥā) and Muḥarram. The committees that announce them are real institutions with real procedures:

• Pakistan — the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee, with regional zonal committees reporting in.
• Indonesia — the Ministry of Religious Affairs' sidang isbat, combining sighting reports with astronomical criteria.
• Morocco — the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs.
• Sri Lanka — the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU).
• Nigeria — the Sultanate of Sokoto, whose announcement much of the north follows.

Four of the twelve are singled out in the Quran, in the same verse that fixes the number of months at twelve:

The four are named in a narration of Abū Bakrah (may Allah be pleased with him): three consecutive — Dhū al-Qaʿdah, Dhū al-Ḥijjah and Muḥarram — and Rajab, which falls between Jumādā and Shaʿbān (Sahih al-Bukhari 3197). Fighting was forbidden in them in the pre-Islamic Arabian year, and the Quran keeps their standing.

Mapped onto 2027, the sacred months bracket the year at both ends. Rajab 1448 is already running on 1 January and closes on 8 January; Dhū al-Qaʿdah and Dhū al-Ḥijjah 1448 run from 8 April to 5 June; Muḥarram 1449 runs 6 June to 4 July; and Rajab 1449 opens again on 29 November. That is four and a half sacred months inside one Gregorian year.

A printed year-view answers the planning question once. The harder habit is the daily one — knowing it is the 13th of Shaʿbān when someone asks, or noticing that tomorrow is the first of Dhū al-Ḥijjah before it has passed.

Itabah keeps the Hijri date on the home screen beside the day's prayer times, with the month's holy days marked ahead of them. It defaults to the same Umm al-Qura tables this article uses, and because a calculated calendar and a sighted one can disagree, the date can be nudged to match a local committee's announcement rather than silently diverging from the mosque down the road.

The rest of the month's worship sits in the same place: prayer times computed on your device from your GPS, the whole Quran with audio and tafsir for the nightly recitation in Ramaḍān, and the daily duʿāʾ collection from Ḥiṣn al-Muslim. Every essential is free, no account is required, and your data is never sold.

If you want to understand why two apps can show different prayer times on the same 2027 date, the companion piece on prayer time calculation methods takes the same calculated-versus-observed question into the daily timetable. And if you are reading this to work out when to begin preparing, the month of Shaʿbān — opening 9 January 2027 — is the traditional runway into Ramaḍān.