When Is the Next Friday the 13th? Every Date From 2026 to 2035

The next Friday the 13th is November 13, 2026, the third and final one this year. After that, you get a break until August 13, 2027. Between 2026 and 2035 there are 17 Friday the 13ths in total. Every year has at least one and never more than three, and any month that starts on a Sunday always has one.

You open your calendar to book a dentist appointment, and there it is: Friday, November 13. The square looks exactly like the ones around it, yet plenty of people feel a tiny flinch anyway. That flinch belongs to a whole family of superstitions tied to unlucky days and numbers. This page sticks to the practical side: when the date shows up, how often, and why the calendar deals it out the way it does.

Every Friday the 13th From 2026 to 2035

Here’s every one for the next ten years. We generated this list straight from the Gregorian calendar rather than copying it from another site, so you can trust the dates.

2026 is the crowded year, with three in total and two of them landing back to back in February and March. 2027 and 2028 get only one each. If you’re picking a date for a wedding, a launch or a move and would rather sidestep the whole thing, those two years make it easy.

Why Some Years Get Three and Others Get Just One

Everything comes down to one simple rule: any month that starts on a Sunday has a Friday the 13th.

Think of the 1st of the month as a starting line. To reach the 13th, you take 12 steps. Seven of those steps bring you right back to the same weekday, so they don’t count. The 5 left over move you from Sunday to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and finally Friday.

So counting Friday the 13ths in a year is really counting how many months begin on a Sunday. That depends on just two things: the weekday January 1 falls on, and whether it’s a leap year.

That table covers every possible year, past or future. 2026 started on a Thursday and isn’t a leap year, which is why it got the maximum. The other route to three, a leap year that starts on a Sunday, doesn’t come around again until 2040.

The same table explains the floor and the ceiling. Over any year, the first days of the 12 months always hit all seven weekdays, so at least one month starts on a Sunday. And no weekday gets to open more than three months in a single year, so three is the cap.

The Longest Wait (and the Shortest) This Decade

The shortest possible gap is the one 2026 just served up: one month, from February 13 to March 13. In a non-leap year, February has exactly 28 days, which is four full weeks. March then starts on the same weekday February did, like a song that loops cleanly back to its first beat.

The longest wait of the decade runs from July 13, 2029, to September 13, 2030: 14 months with no Friday the 13th at all. That’s the longest stretch the calendar allows.

Like the 2026 pattern? It returns in 2037, the next common year that starts on a Thursday, with the same February, March and November lineup.

Is the 13th Really More Likely to Land on a Friday?

Yes, technically. The Gregorian calendar repeats itself exactly every 400 years, because 400 years add up to precisely 20,871 weeks. Picture a playlist that loops perfectly every four centuries. Count every 13th in one full loop and you get 4,800 of them, spread out like this:

• Friday: 688
• Sunday: 687
• Wednesday: 687
• Monday: 685
• Tuesday: 685
• Thursday: 684
• Saturday: 684

Mathematician B.H. Brown published this result in 1933 in The American Mathematical Monthly, and the counts above match a fresh tally of the calendar. So the 13th falls on Friday more often than on any other day. But the lead is four occurrences out of 4,800. That’s about as meaningful as finding one extra raisin in a big bag of trail mix.

Why Friday the 13th Feels Unlucky in the First Place

Friday and the number 13 each carried a bad reputation separately for centuries. Pairing them into one specific unlucky date is surprisingly recent. Most folklorists find no record of the combined belief before the 19th century.

A big boost came in 1907, when Boston businessman Thomas W. Lawson published a novel called Friday, the Thirteenth. In it, a stockbroker uses the date’s spooky reputation to set off a panic on Wall Street. Some historians argue the novel did much of the work of spreading the superstition, and many of the dramatic origin stories you’ll read online were attached later. For the longer version, see the full story behind Friday the 13th’s bad reputation, or zoom out to where most everyday superstitions come from.

The date isn’t unlucky everywhere, either. In Spanish-speaking countries and Greece, the day to dread is Tuesday the 13th, and Spain’s version falls on a Tuesday for reasons of its own. In Italy, Friday the 17th takes the spot.

Why does a list of dates even feel useful? Shuffling plans around Friday the 13th gives a pleasant sense of steering your own luck, a habit psychologists call the illusion of control. It costs almost nothing, and it feels like protection.

Does Anything Actually Go Wrong on Friday the 13th?

You’ll often see the claim that 17 to 21 million Americans fear the day. That figure is an estimate credited to folklore historian Donald Dossey, and it was about fear of the number 13 in general, not this particular date. It’s an estimate, not the result of a published survey.

Real data paints a messier picture than the legend:

• The famous “unlucky” study. A 1993 paper in the BMJ compared Friday the 13th with Friday the 6th in one region south of London. Fewer cars used the motorway on the 13th, but more people were admitted to hospital after transport accidents: 65 versus 45. Those are small numbers from a single area, which makes the result fragile.
• The bigger emergency-room check. A 2012 study led by emergency physician Bruce Lo looked at seven years of visits across six hospitals. ER visits on Friday the 13th were no higher than on surrounding Fridays. Of 13 types of cases checked, only penetrating injuries showed a rise.
• The insurance angle. In 2008, the Dutch insurance association reported about 7,500 road accidents on an average Friday the 13th, compared with 7,800 on ordinary Fridays. A popular explanation is that people drive a bit more carefully when they believe the day is cursed.

Put together, no study shows a consistent spike in bad luck. If anything, the date may make some people slightly more cautious.

Related Superstitions

• Why 13 got singled out as an unlucky number
• [What a black cat crossing your path is supposed to mean][LINK LATER → /superstitions/black-cat/]

FAQ BLOCK

SOURCES

1. B.H. Brown, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 40, No. 10 (1933), via University of Notre Dame — “Brown’s theorem” — https://www3.nd.edu/~dgalvin1/Probpuz/brown.pdf
2. Becky Little, National Geographic (May 12, 2016) — “Friday the 13th and the Knights Templar” — https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/160512-friday-13-knights-templar-superstition
3. NBC New York — “13 facts about Friday the 13th” — https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/thirteen-facts-friday-13th/6461168/
4. T.J. Scanlon, R.N. Luben, F.L. Scanlon, N. Singleton, BMJ 1993;307:1584 — “Is Friday the 13th bad for your health?” — https://www.bmj.com/content/307/6919/1584
5. Eastern Virginia Medical School — “Don’t buy into the hype, Friday the 13th might not be so unlucky” (on Lo et al., American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2012) — https://test-www.evms.edu/news/dontbuyintothehypefridaythe13thmightnotbesounlucky.html
6. DutchNews.nl (June 12, 2008) — “Fewer accidents on Friday 13” — https://dutchnews.nl/2008/06/fewer_accidents_on_friday_13