Very colorful Carnaval float with a giant clock, populated by people in colorful costumes. The audience is looking up. Photo courtesy of ipanema.com. All rights reserved.

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Dates of Carnaval in Rio

One of the world's best-kept secrets is the formula to discover the dates of Carnaval. They change every year, according to the date of Easter Sunday in the Catholic calendar and even the moon's phases. If you need a quick answer, here are the dates for the next decade.

Dates of Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro for the next decade. There's a blackboard floating with the dates in the middle of complicated mathematical formulas and a dog wearing reading glasses who did the calculations.
It took our assistant a little while to put these dates together. Feel free to share.

What's the easy way?

There's a shortcut if you don't want to learn all the details. You already know the connection to Easter. Well, before Easter, there is a period called Lent. The first day of Lent is called Ash Wednesday, part of the Catholic calendar. The day before is Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday. The day Carnaval ends. In Brazil and a few other countries, it is a national holiday. All you have to do is look it up.

A blackboard with a man thinking about a question and a bright idea. He is looking at a Carnaval wreath.
With this neat little trick, there's no need to count back days or weeks. Don't spread the word.

To save you from the trouble of any additional research, and after popular demand, we brought back our new and improved Carnaval Date Finder. We've got you covered until the year 9999!

Eternal Carnaval Date Finder

 

Estimating Carnaval Dates - The History

Carnaval is usually in February or March. This is a four-day celebration from Saturday through Tuesday. To find the correct dates, you must first know when Easter happens. Then count back the weeks. Seven weeks, to be precise. Carnaval Sunday is exactly 49 days before Easter Sunday. Seems easy, right?

Not really. Easter changes dates every year, so we are back to square one. Easter is the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. This is the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. We are starting to move into ancient history. Do not be alarmed.

Three Cariocas enjoying street festivities in Ipanema. The girl is dressed up as Mario, and the two boys are shirtless, wearing pink bunny ears.
Bunny ears are a popular accessory among boys and girls. Mainly because it makes them look cute. Yet Easter is closely associated with Carnaval datewise.

Easter date was defined by the Council of Nicaea in AD325, ages ago. In AD590, Gregorius I, the Great, set a date named "carne vale," which means in Latin something like Latin for "farewell to meat." Consider it the last hurrah before Lent's fasting period, observed by traditional Christians from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday.

Masques Nicois, Grand album souvenirs du carnaval 1898. Reproduction.
The cover of a Carnaval illustration book published in Nice, France, in 1898.

There are more complications. From circa 46 BC until 1582, most countries used the Julian calendar. It was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar used in most Western countries. As the dates the Orthodox Church uses to set their religious festivities rely on the old calendar, beware that their Easter happens on a different date.

There's More!

  • Easter is not calculated based on the actual astronomical full moon but on an ecclesiastical approximation called the "Paschal Full Moon." This is the first full moon on or after March 21st.
  • Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after this Paschal Full Moon. When the Pascal Full happens on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday.
  • Records show that Carnaval in Brazil dates back to around the 1720s, with the arrival of Portuguese immigrants coming from the islands of the Azores and Cabo Verde (see History).

Now that you have all the elements to know the dates, pick out a year and start making your plans. We hope to see you soon!