The first full moon of spring — the Paschal Moon — reaches its peak on April 1, 2026, at 10:12 p.m. EDT, and by longstanding ecclesiastical rules it determines this year’s date for Easter. Because Easter is observed on the Sunday following the Paschal full moon, the festival will be celebrated on April 5, 2026.
Astronomically, the April 1 full moon sits in the sky about a dozen degrees southeast of where the sun appears at the first day of the autumnal equinox, an angular relation noted for how it contrasts with the autumn Harvest Moon. That full moon, occurring near the autumnal equinox, often appears to rise at nearly the same time for several nights; by contrast the Paschal full moon typically rises progressively later night-to-night. Over the three-night window around this Paschal full moon, moonrise across a sampling of North American cities averages just over 65 minutes later each night.
The night-to-night change is not uniform: northerly locations see larger jumps, while southern latitudes see smaller ones. Edmonton, Alberta (latitude 53.6°N), for example, experiences average nightly moonrise delays of about 78 minutes around the Paschal full moon; Miami, Florida (26°N), sees an average difference of just under 55 minutes. In Sydney, Australia — where the full moon falls on April 2 by the local calendar — the night-to-night moonrise difference is much smaller, at just under 27 minutes. These variations stem from the angle the moon’s path (the ecliptic) makes with the horizon at different latitudes and seasons: in the Northern Hemisphere in spring the ecliptic meets the eastern horizon at a steep angle, producing larger delays in moonrise time.
The date of Easter is tied to a blend of astronomical observation and centuries-old Church rules. Churches use an ecclesiastical approximation that fixes the vernal equinox on March 21 for the purposes of calculating Easter, even though the astronomical equinox will occur no later than March 20 throughout the period 2008–2103. That difference in definition can produce discrepancies between the astronomically calculated date of Easter and the date observed under the Church’s formulae, which rely on systems such as the Golden Number and Epacts to approximate lunar phases.
A striking illustration of the mismatch appears in forecasts for 2038: astronomically, the equinox falls on March 20 and a full moon follows on March 21, which would place Easter on March 28. Under the current ecclesiastical rules, however, Easter in 2038 will be observed at the latest possible date of April 25, underscoring how the Church’s fixed equinox and its lunar approximations can push the holiday significantly later than a purely astronomical calculation would.
Easter’s date therefore remains movable within a fixed range — it can fall as early as March 22 and as late as April 25 — and the Paschal full moon is the pivot around which that annual calculation turns. This year’s early April full moon places Easter toward the earlier side of that window, arriving on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, April 5. The Paschal full moon also corresponds to Nisan 14 or 15 on the Jewish calendar, the date associated with Passover, which historically ties the timing of the Christian feast to the lunar-solar rhythms observed in the region where Christianity originated.