Coptic Date Today
As of Tuesday, May 19, 2026 at 11:29 PM, today's Coptic (Egyptian Christian) date is:
Today's Coptic (Egyptian Christian) date — full detail
- Date
- 11 Pashons 1742 AM
- Coptic
- 11 Pashons 1742 AM
- Short form
- 11/9/1742 AM
- Month
- Pashons
- Year
- 1742 AM — Anno Martyrum ("Year of the Martyrs")
- Gregorian
- Tuesday, May 19, 2026
- Era name
- Anno Martyrum (AM) — Year of the Martyrs
- Year conversion
- Approximately Gregorian − 284 (after Coptic new year on 11 September)
- New Year
- Nayrouz — 1 Thout ≈ 11 September
- Twelve months (Coptic)
- Thout, Paopi, Hathor, Koiak, Tobi, Meshir, Paremhat, Parmouti, Pashons, Paoni, Epip, Mesori
- 13th month (intercalary)
- Pi Kogi Enavot — 5 days (or 6 in leap years)
- Leap year rule
- Every 4 years (matching Julian), occurring in years before Gregorian leap years
Why today matters
Today is 11 Pashons 1742 AM — a date in the oldest surviving Christian liturgical calendar still in continuous use. The Coptic Orthodox Church's entire year of fasts, feasts, Marian commemorations, saints' days, and the great cycle of the Divine Liturgy is anchored to this calendar. The era name Anno Martyrum ("Year of the Martyrs") commemorates the catastrophic Diocletianic Persecution that began in 303 CE — the most violent and systematic Roman persecution of Christians, which fell especially hard on Egypt. Rather than counting time by Roman emperors who had tried to destroy the Church, the Copts chose to count from the moment of their suffering — a permanent monument in time to the witnesses (in Greek, martyres) who refused to abandon their faith.
<em>Anno Martyrum</em> — the Year of the Martyrs. The Coptic Church names her time not by emperors but by the witnesses she gave them.
How we compute this
Coptic (Egyptian Christian) is a solar calendar. Each year contains 365 days (common) or 366 days (leap), structured as 12 months × 30 days + a short 13th month of 5 or 6 days (Pi Kogi Enavot, called "Nasie" in Arabic), with each month averaging Exactly 30 days for the first 12 months. Years are counted from 29 August 284 CE — the accession of Roman Emperor Diocletian (era: AM — Anno Martyrum ("Year of the Martyrs")).
The Coptic calendar is the direct lineal descendant of the ancient Egyptian civil calendar — possibly the oldest continuously-used calendar system on earth, with origins reaching back over 4,500 years to the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The original Egyptian calendar had 12 months of 30 days plus 5 epagomenal days, totaling 365 days but with no leap year, so it slowly drifted against the seasons. In 25 BCE, the Roman emperor Augustus reformed the Egyptian calendar to add a 6th epagomenal day every four years (matching the Julian calendar). When Egypt converted to Christianity over the 3rd–6th centuries, this Augustan Egyptian calendar was adopted by the Coptic Church and given its current era count, with year 1 fixed at the accession of Diocletian in 284 CE (Anno Martyrum 1). The Coptic calendar then spread southward into the Kingdom of Aksum, becoming the basis for the Ethiopian calendar — which uses identical month lengths but a different era (7–8 years behind Coptic AM) and different month names in Ge'ez rather than Coptic.
Used by: ~10–15 million Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Christians worldwide. Regions: Egypt (where Copts are the largest Christian community in the Middle East), Sudan, Libya, and the global Coptic diaspora — particularly in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe.