What Date is Easter 2025? Sunday April 20, UK Holidays

Easter Sunday 2025 falls on April 20, one of the latest dates in recent memory. Good Friday (April 18) and Easter Monday (April 21) shape the UK bank holiday landscape, but whether you get the Monday off depends on where you live.

Easter Sunday 2025: April 20 · Good Friday 2025: April 18 · Easter Monday 2025: April 21 · UK Bank Holidays: Good Friday and Easter Monday

Key dates for Easter 2025 are consistent across official and secondary sources, with regional variations affecting only the Easter Monday bank holiday.

What dates are Good Friday and Easter Monday in 2025?

Good Friday lands on 18 April 2025, confirmed across every UK region and verified by the GOV.UK bank holidays calendar. It is a statutory bank holiday in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — making it the most universally observed Easter bank holiday in the UK.

Easter Monday follows on 21 April 2025, but its availability depends on where you are. England and Wales get the Monday off, as does Northern Ireland. Scotland does not observe Easter Monday as a national bank holiday, though some individual councils may grant local observance. Factorial HR’s regional breakdown confirms this split across all three jurisdictions.

UK bank holidays

For workers planning time off, the arrangement creates a natural four-day Easter weekend from 18–21 April: Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday. Public Holiday Guide notes that with both Good Friday and Easter Monday as statutory holidays, employees can secure up to eight consecutive days off by booking just two days of annual leave around the 14–25 April window.

The Visit London resource confirms both dates for England, and Office Simplify’s independent England bank holiday list matches the same Good Friday and Easter Monday dates. Royal Mail has also confirmed no post will be delivered or collected on either Good Friday or Easter Monday.

What dates are for Easter 2025?

Easter Sunday 2025 falls on 20 April 2025, which places it firmly in the late-April window. This date is confirmed by Public Holiday Guide and corroborated by Calendar Date, which notes Good Friday arrives two days prior on 18 April.

Easter Sunday date

Easter Sunday is a religious observance, not a public holiday, in any UK jurisdiction. This means most businesses, shops, and services operate normally on the Sunday itself — though many choose to close. The four-day break most workers experience comes from the flanking bank holidays (Friday and Monday), not Sunday.

Regional variations

Northern Ireland includes a few additional quirks beyond the standard Easter weekend. According to Good Tuesday’s regional list, Northern Ireland also observed a St Patrick’s Day substitute on 17 March 2025 and will observe the Battle of the Boyne substitute on 14 July 2025 — holidays not shared with England, Wales, or Scotland. Scotland, meanwhile, observes its Summer Bank Holiday on 4 August 2025, two weeks earlier than England’s 25 August date.

Why is Easter so late in 2025?

Easter 2025 is remarkably late. Easter Sunday on 20 April is the latest date it has fallen on since 1943, when it arrived on 25 April. Evening Standard reports that Good Friday 2025 (18 April) falls almost three weeks later than Good Friday 2024 (29 March) — a significant shift that affects school term dates, travel planning, and annual leave strategies for workers across the country.

Comparison to recent years

To understand the swing, compare Easter’s trajectory: Easter 2023 landed on 9 April, Easter 2024 on 31 March, and Easter 2025 on 20 April. The 2025 date sits near the outer edge of the possible Easter window (22 March to 25 April). Business Wales contrasts this with 2026, when Good Friday arrives on 3 April — firmly in the middle range.

Lunar calendar impact

The reason is mathematical: Easter’s date follows the lunar cycle. It falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. In 2025, the full moon after the equinox arrives late enough to push Easter deep into April. The interplay between the solar calendar (which governs the equinox) and the lunar calendar (which governs the full moon) creates this delay.

Why does the date of Easter move around?

Easter is what astronomers and liturgical scholars call a moveable feast — its date changes every year because it is tied to the lunar calendar rather than a fixed solar date. The rule, formally established at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, is straightforward in principle but produces complex results in practice: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring (vernal) equinox.

Calculation method

In practice, this means Easter can fall as early as 22 March (if the full moon falls on 21 March and is a Saturday) or as late as 25 April (if the full moon falls on 20 April and is a Sunday, pushing Easter to the following Sunday). The full moon in question is not the astronomical full moon but the ecclesiastical full moon — a calculated approximation used by the church to avoid the complexity of predicting actual lunar phases. BBC Bitesize explains this system for educational audiences.

Ecclesiastical rules

The ecclesiastical full moon is determined by church tables, not telescopes. This creates a slight offset from the astronomical full moon — occasionally causing Easter to fall on a different date than pure astronomy would suggest. This is why the Orthodox Church (which uses the Julian calendar for liturgical calculations) often celebrates Easter on a different date than Western churches. The Wikipedia overview of UK public holidays notes that this split has practical implications for employers with multinational workforces.

What is the rarest date for Easter?

The rarest date for Easter is 25 April — it has happened only twice in the past century (in 1943 and 1947), making it extraordinarily uncommon. At the other end of the spectrum, Easter has never fallen on 22 March in modern record-keeping, though that date remains theoretically possible under the calculation rules. Most Easters cluster between late March and mid-April.

Historical rarity

According to astronomical records and Wikipedia’s Computus entry, Easter distribution across its full window is not uniform. Dates in late March and early April occur more frequently than dates in late April. This is because the full moons that determine Easter’s timing are distributed unevenly across the lunar year — not because of any intentional scheduling pattern.

2025 context

Easter 2025 (20 April) is not the rarest possible date, but it is uncommon. Falling on the third-to-last day of the window, it sits in the top quartile of rarity. For planners and employers, a late Easter typically means longer school terms before the break and, often, higher demand for holiday travel — which can push up prices for flights and accommodation around mid-to-late April.