Persian Calendar Converter
Convert any date between the Persian (Solar Hijri, Jalali, Shamsi) calendar and the Gregorian calendar, in both directions.
1 Farvardin 1405 SH
from 21 March 2026 CE
2026-03-21
Proleptic Gregorian, YYYY-MM-DD
۱۴۰۵/۰۱/۰۱
1405/01/01
21 March 2027 CE
Starts 1406 SH · the entered date is Nowruz 1405 SH
2026 − 621 = 1405. From Nowruz to 31 December the Gregorian year runs 621 ahead of the Solar Hijri one.
About this date
Persian year
SH 1405
Day of week
Saturday
Afghan month
Hamal · Aries
Days in this Persian month
31
How this date is converted
Entered: 21 March 2026 CE (Gregorian).
21 March 2026 CE → Julian Day 2461121.
Julian Day 2461121 → 1 Farvardin 1405 SH (Persian (Solar Hijri)).
1405 SH is a common year: Esfand has 29 days and the year runs 365 days.
Nowruz 1405 SH fell on 2026-03-21, so the Gregorian year runs 621 ahead of the Solar Hijri one for this date.
Leap years follow Borkowski (1996): the 33-year cycle with break years, referenced to mean noon at 52.5° E, which is the calendar the Calendar Center of the University of Tehran publishes. Supported band: Solar Hijri 1–3000.
Persian months: Iranian and Afghan names
| # | Iranian name | Afghan name | Zodiac sign | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Farvardin | Hamal | Aries | 31 |
| 2 | Ordibehesht | Sawr (Saur) | Taurus | 31 |
| 3 | Khordad | Jawza | Gemini | 31 |
| 4 | Tir | Saratan | Cancer | 31 |
| 5 | Mordad | Asad | Leo | 31 |
| 6 | Shahrivar | Sonbola (Sunbula) | Virgo | 31 |
| 7 | Mehr | Mizan | Libra | 30 |
| 8 | Aban | Aqrab | Scorpio | 30 |
| 9 | Azar | Qaws | Sagittarius | 30 |
| 10 | Dey | Jadi | Capricorn | 30 |
| 11 | Bahman | Dalw (Dalwa) | Aquarius | 30 |
| 12 | Esfand | Hut (Hoot) | Pisces | 29 |
Reading a lunar Hijri (AH) date instead? Open the Hijri calendar converter.
Persian calendar converter. Solar Hijri dates to Gregorian, and back.
Enter a Solar Hijri date — the Persian, Jalali or Shamsi calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan — and this converter returns the Gregorian date and weekday. Reverse the direction to go the other way; the panel also gives the Iranian short date in Persian digits, the Afghan name of the month, and the date of the next Nowruz.
What Is the Persian (Solar Hijri) Calendar?
The Solar Hijri calendar is the official civil calendar of Iran and the calendar printed on Afghan civil documents, and the Gregorian year 2026 spans two of its years: 1404 until 20 March and 1405 from 21 March onward. It counts from the same event as the Islamic lunar calendar, the Hijra of 622 CE, but it tracks the sun rather than the moon, so its year runs 365 or 366 days and its number sits 621 or 622 behind the Gregorian one.
Persian calendar, Iranian calendar, Jalali, Shamsi and Solar Hijri all name the same system, and a converted date carries the era marker SH. Jalali points back to the 11th-century reform carried out by a group of astronomers that included Omar Khayyam; Shamsi, from the word for sun, is the everyday term in Persian and Dari; Solar Hijri is the formal English name. Afghanistan runs the same twelve months under Arabic zodiac names, which is why Farvardin appears on an Afghan document as Hamal and Ordibehesht as Sawr.
Months one to six hold 31 days, months seven to eleven hold 30, and Esfand, the twelfth, holds 29 — or 30 in a leap year. Leap years in the current stretch are 1403, 1408 and 1412, so a document dated 30 Esfand is valid in one year and impossible in the next. That single day is behind most of the disagreements between date converters.
The year opens at Nowruz, and the rule is astronomical rather than arithmetic: the year begins at the midnight in the interval between the two consecutive solar noons that contains the instant of the March equinox, with solar noon measured at the meridian used for Iran Standard Time, 52.5 degrees east. Because the equinox drifts against the clock from year to year, 1 Farvardin falls on 20 March in some years and 21 March in others, and no fixed rule can predict which without computing the equinox.
Once the year has started, the gap between the two calendars is fixed and takes only two values:
This converter computes leap years with the breaks-table algorithm Kazimierz M. Borkowski published in 1996 in Earth, Moon, and Planets, referenced to mean noon at 52.5 degrees east — the same algorithm behind the jalaali-js and moment-jalaali libraries, whose documentation credits Borkowski by name. It reproduces the civil calendar published by the Calendar Center of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Tehran, the body that fixes Iran's calendar, and it accepts Solar Hijri years 1 to 3000 and Gregorian years 622 to 3621.
The calendar's legal history explains most of the odd dates a genealogist meets. The Iranian Majles declared the Hejri Shamsi calendar official on 21 February 1911, and the present form was adopted by law on 31 March 1925; Afghanistan adopted the same calendar in 1922, keeping zodiac month names. Documents older than that usually carry lunar Hijri dates instead. Iranian paperwork from the second half of the 1970s can carry an Imperial (Shahanshahi) year such as 2535, which is a Solar Hijri year plus 1180 — subtract to get 1355 and then convert.
How to Convert a Date and Read Each Card
The converter opens on 21 March 2026 and 1 Farvardin 1405 — Nowruz, the first day of Persian year 1405 — so a full worked conversion is on screen before you type anything.
1. Pick a direction. The two pills at the top read To Persian and To Gregorian. Switching them converts the date already on screen instead of re-reading the same three numbers in the other calendar, so flipping twice returns you to where you started.
2. Fill in the day, the month and the year. The month dropdown lists Gregorian months while you are converting to Persian and Persian months while you are converting to Gregorian. The year field reads Year (CE) or Year (SH) so the number is never ambiguous. Press Today to fill all three fields with the current date.
3. Read the four cards. The converted date sits on card one — 1 Farvardin 1405 SH at the opening state, with the date you entered named underneath. Card two is the ISO-8601 Gregorian form, 2026-03-21, the string databases, spreadsheets and any field asking for YYYY-MM-DD expect, and card three the Iranian short date in Persian digits, ۱۴۰۵/۰۱/۰۱, with 1405/01/01 in Latin digits beneath it. A copy button sits on each of those three. Next Nowruz occupies the fourth, naming the Gregorian date the coming Persian year begins on; its second line counts the days left to it on any date except 1 Farvardin itself, and on 1 Farvardin — which is the opening state — it says instead that the date you entered is Nowruz.
4. Check the sentence under the cards. At the default state it reads 2026 − 621 = 1405, showing which offset applies. The same line is where the page tells you that a date was adjusted, for example when Esfand has 29 days in the year you entered and you asked for the 30th.
5. Scan the four figures under About this date. Persian year always shows the Solar Hijri year, in both directions, so it answers what year is it in Iran no matter which way you are converting. Day of week, the Afghan month with its zodiac sign, and the number of days in that Persian month sit beside it.
6. Open How this date is converted when you need the method. The disclosure lists the date you entered, its Julian Day, the Julian Day converted back, whether the year is leap or common, the Nowruz offset, and the algorithm, meridian, authority and supported year band.
Below the calculator, the month table pairs every Iranian month with its Afghan name, its zodiac sign and its length. The row for the month on screen is highlighted, and the Days column is live, so the Esfand row reads 29 or 30 according to the year you entered. A closing link opens the Hijri calendar converter for lunar AH dates, which are a different calendar entirely.
The address bar keeps the state as ?from=gregorian&d=&m=&y=, and default values are left out, so a copied link can carry the direction alone rather than the whole date — check the parameters before sending one. To put the converter on your own page, use the embed at /widget/persian-calendar-converter.
Solar Hijri to Gregorian Reference Dates
| Solar Hijri date | Gregorian | What it marks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Farvardin 1405 | March 21, 2026 | Nowruz — start of Persian year 1405 |
| 1 Farvardin 1406 | March 21, 2027 | Nowruz — start of Persian year 1406 |
| 1 Farvardin 1407 | March 20, 2028 | Nowruz — start of Persian year 1407 |
| 1 Farvardin 1408 | March 20, 2029 | Nowruz — start of 1408, a leap year, so Esfand has 30 days |
| 13 Farvardin 1405 | April 2, 2026 | Sizdah Bedar — the 13th day of the new year |
| 30 Azar 1405 | December 21, 2026 | Yalda Night — the longest night of the year |
| 11 Dey 1404 | January 1, 2026 | New Year's Day 2026 |
| 11 Dey 1378 | January 1, 2000 | New Year's Day 2000 |
| 30 Esfand 1403 | March 20, 2025 | Last day of leap year 1403 — Unicode's ICU4X library returned 1 Farvardin 1404 for this date before the bug was fixed |
| 1 Farvardin 1304 | March 21, 1925 | Start of the Persian year in which Iran adopted this calendar by law, on 31 March 1925 |
| 1 Farvardin 1301 | March 22, 1922 | Start of the Persian year in which Afghanistan adopted the same calendar, under zodiac month names |
| 1 Farvardin 1 | March 22, 622 | Epoch — the year of the Hijra; 19 March 622 in the Julian calendar |
Worked Persian to Gregorian Conversions
What Persian year is 2026?
Set the direction to To Persian and enter 1 January 2026. The converter returns 11 Dey 1404 SH, a Thursday, and the line under the cards shows the 622 offset because the date sits between New Year's Day and Nowruz. Enter 21 March 2026 instead and the answer is 1 Farvardin 1405, with the offset now 621. One Gregorian year therefore covers two Persian years, and the changeover is Nowruz rather than 1 January — which is why a single subtraction gives the wrong answer for every date between New Year's Day and Nowruz.
Converting a Shamsi birth date for a US form
A shenasnameh recording a birth on 15 Mordad 1342 is a Persian-origin date, so switch to To Gregorian, choose Mordad in the month dropdown, and enter 15 and 1342. The converter returns 6 August 1963, a Tuesday, and the second card gives 1963-08-06 with a copy button. Copy the card that matches the form in front of you: the ISO string for anything that wants YYYY-MM-DD, and the first card, which spells the month out as 6 August 1963 CE, for a field that wants the month in words — a US form usually needs that reordered to August 6, 1963 and the era marker dropped. The weekday under About this date is the quickest check that you picked the right month, since an off-by-one month shifts it.
Reading a date on an Afghan tazkera
Afghan documents use the same calendar with zodiac month names, so a tazkera dated 12 Sawr 1380 has to be translated into the Iranian month list before the dropdown will accept it. The month table under the calculator pairs the two: Sawr is Ordibehesht, month 2, Taurus, 31 days. Pick Ordibehesht, enter 12 and 1380, and the result is 2 May 2001, a Wednesday. Once the conversion resolves, the Afghan month figure reads Sawr again, which confirms you started from the right row.
When is the next Nowruz, and why the date moves
Nowruz is 1 Farvardin, and Iran's civil date for it falls on 20 or 21 March depending on where the March equinox lands against solar noon in Tehran. The fourth card answers this without touching the form: it names the Gregorian date of the following Nowruz for whatever date you convert, and counts the days left to it on every date except 1 Farvardin, where it tells you instead that the date you entered is Nowruz. The next eight are these.
| Persian year | Nowruz (Gregorian) |
|---|---|
| 1405 | March 21, 2026 |
| 1406 | March 21, 2027 |
| 1407 | March 20, 2028 |
| 1408 | March 20, 2029 |
| 1409 | March 21, 2030 |
| 1410 | March 21, 2031 |
| 1411 | March 20, 2032 |
| 1412 | March 20, 2033 |
The United Nations observes an International Day of Nowruz on 21 March every year, a fixed civic date that does not move with the equinox. In 1406 the two agree; in 1407 Iran's 1 Farvardin is 20 March 2028 while the UN observance stays on the 21st.
The 1403 leap year, and why two converters can disagree
Enter 20 March 2025 and the answer is 30 Esfand 1403, a Thursday — the extra day that exists only in a leap year, and the last day of 1403. Converters built on Birashk's 2820-year arithmetic cycle move that leap day to 1404 and return 1 Farvardin 1404 for the same input, which leaves them one day out for every date from 20 March 2025 to 19 March 2026. Unicode's own ICU4X library shipped that cycle, and its bug report number 4713, titled Persian calendar conversion uses wrong algorithm, records the library returning 1 Farvardin 1404 for 20 March 2025 before the fix landed. To tell which converter you are holding, feed it 20 March 2025 and read the year.
Mistakes That Produce the Wrong Date
- Treating the Solar Hijri and the lunar Hijri calendars as one calendar because both count from 622 CE. The solar one tracks the sun, so most of 2026 falls in 1405 SH; the lunar one tracks the moon, loses about eleven days a year against the sun, and puts the same stretch of 2026 in 1447 to 1448 AH. A date marked SH and a date marked AH are more than forty years apart in numbering.
- Subtracting a flat 621 or 622 from the Gregorian year. The offset is 621 from Nowruz to 31 December and 622 from 1 January to the day before Nowruz, so 1 January 2026 is 1404 while 21 March 2026 is 1405. The stretch between New Year's Day and Nowruz, about eleven weeks, is where a single subtraction goes wrong.
- Assuming Nowruz is always 21 March. Iran's civil 1 Farvardin is 20 March in 1403, 1407, 1408, 1411, 1412, 1415, 1416, 1419 and 1420, and 21 March in the years between. The UN's International Day of Nowruz is separately fixed at 21 March and does not move, so the two can name different days.
- Trusting an arithmetic converter across a leap-year boundary. A converter built on Birashk's 2820-year cycle places the 1403 leap day in 1404 and is one day out for every date between 20 March 2025 and 19 March 2026. Fourmilab, which publishes an implementation of it, labels that algorithmic Persian calendar as not the calendar in use in Iran.
- Reading a 2535-style year as Solar Hijri. Iranian documents from the second half of the 1970s can carry the Imperial (Shahanshahi) era, which runs 1180 years ahead: 2535 − 1180 = 1355 SH. Convert 1355, not 2535, or the result lands more than a millennium out.
- Assuming 30 Esfand always exists. Esfand holds 29 days in a common year, so 30 Esfand 1404 is not a real date. Ask for it and the converter uses 29 Esfand 1404 and says so in the line under the cards — a signal that the document you are reading has a typo or a different calendar behind it.
Persian Calendar Terms You Will Meet on Documents
Solar Hijri (SH)
The formal English name of the calendar and the era marker printed after a converted year, as in 1 Farvardin 1405 SH. It shares the 622 CE epoch with the lunar Hijri calendar but counts solar years.
Jalali
The name of the 11th-century reform, carried out by a group of astronomers including Omar Khayyam, from which the modern calendar descends. Developer libraries such as jalaali-js and moment-jalaali use this spelling.
Shamsi
The everyday Persian and Dari word for the solar calendar, from the word for sun. A form asking for a Shamsi date is asking for the same date this converter produces in the To Persian direction.
Miladi
The Persian and Dari word for the Gregorian calendar. Afghan and Iranian paperwork often prints Shamsi and Miladi dates side by side, which is what the To Gregorian direction produces.
Nowruz
The Persian New Year and 1 Farvardin, the first day of the Solar Hijri year. Iran's civil date for it is 20 or 21 March, fixed each year by the March equinox measured against solar noon in Tehran.
Esfand
The twelfth and last Persian month, with 29 days in a common year and 30 in a leap year. A date of 30 Esfand is only valid in a leap year, which in the current stretch means 1403, 1408 and 1412.
Afghan (zodiac) month names
The Arabic zodiac names Afghanistan uses for the same twelve months: Hamal, Sawr, Jawza, Saratan, Asad, Sonbola, Mizan, Aqrab, Qaws, Jadi, Dalw and Hut. Romanization varies, so Sawr also appears as Saur and Hut as Hoot.
Tazkera and shenasnameh
The Afghan identity document and the Iranian identity booklet. Both record a birth date in the Solar Hijri calendar, which is why a Gregorian equivalent is needed for visa, school and immigration paperwork.
Shahanshahi (Imperial era)
A short-lived era used on Iranian documents in the second half of the 1970s, counting from the reign of Cyrus the Great. A Shahanshahi year is the Solar Hijri year plus 1180, so 2535 is 1355 SH.
Persian Calendar Converter FAQ
How do I convert a Shamsi date to Gregorian?
Set the direction to To Gregorian, pick the Persian month from the dropdown, and type the day and the year. The converter returns the Gregorian date and its weekday. For example, 15 Mordad 1342 comes back as Tuesday, 6 August 1963.
What Persian year is the current Gregorian year?
Subtract 621 for dates from Nowruz to 31 December and 622 for dates from 1 January to the day before Nowruz. So 2026 is Solar Hijri 1404 until 20 March and 1405 from 21 March, and 2027 is 1405 until 20 March and 1406 from 21 March. The Persian year figure under the cards shows the Solar Hijri year for whatever date you enter, in either direction.
Are Persian, Jalali, Shamsi and Solar Hijri the same calendar?
Yes. All four name the calendar this converter uses, along with Iranian calendar and Hijri Shamsi. Jalali refers to its 11th-century origin, Shamsi is the everyday Persian word, and Solar Hijri is the formal English name.
Is the Solar Hijri calendar the same as the Islamic Hijri calendar?
No, and this is the most common mix-up. Both count from the Hijra in 622 CE, but the Solar Hijri calendar follows the sun with 365 or 366-day years, so most of 2026 is 1405 SH, while the Islamic calendar follows the moon with 354 or 355-day years and puts the same period in 1447 to 1448 AH. A date marked AH belongs in the Hijri calendar converter, which is linked at the bottom of this one.
Is Nowruz on 20 or 21 March?
Both dates occur. Iran's civil 1 Farvardin lands on whichever day the March equinox falls closest to, measured against solar noon at 52.5 degrees east, so it is 21 March in 1405 and 1406 and 20 March in 1407 and 1408. The UN's International Day of Nowruz is fixed at 21 March and does not track the equinox, so in a year like 1407 the observance and Iran's own 1 Farvardin fall on different days.
My tazkera says 12 Sawr — which Persian month is that?
Sawr is the Afghan name for Ordibehesht, the second month, under the sign of Taurus, with 31 days. Choose Ordibehesht in the dropdown and enter 12 and the year. The month table under the calculator maps all twelve names in both systems.
Why do two Persian date converters give me different days?
Because they disagree about which years are leap. Converters that use Birashk's 2820-year arithmetic cycle put the 1403 leap day in 1404, so their output differs by one day for every date between 20 March 2025 and 19 March 2026, and again around 1437 SH and 1470 SH. This converter uses Borkowski's 33-year-cycle breaks table, the algorithm behind jalaali-js, moment-jalaali and the CLDR Persian calendar, and it matches the civil calendar published by the University of Tehran Calendar Center. To test any converter, enter 20 March 2025: the correct answer is 30 Esfand 1403.
Is 1403 a leap year, and is 30 Esfand a real date?
1403 is a leap year, so 30 Esfand 1403 exists and falls on Thursday, 20 March 2025. Leap years in the surrounding stretch are 1403, 1408 and 1412. In a common year Esfand stops at 29, so 30 Esfand 1404 does not exist; enter it and the converter uses 29 Esfand 1404 and names the adjustment in the line under the cards.
Which date should I write on a US or UK form?
Write the Gregorian date, and copy it from the card that matches the field. The second card gives the ISO-8601 form, 1963-08-06, for any field that wants YYYY-MM-DD or feeds a database. The first card spells the month out as 6 August 1963 CE, so a field asking for August 6, 1963 needs that reordered and the era marker dropped. Keep the original Solar Hijri date beside it in your notes, because a translator or a caseworker checking the document will want to see both.
Can I convert a date from before Iran adopted this calendar in 1925?
Yes, and the converter does it without complaint down to 1 Farvardin of year 1, which is 22 March 622 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. Treat anything before Iran's 1911 declaration and its 1925 law as a projection backward, though: Iranian documents from that period are usually dated in the lunar Hijri calendar, and an Imperial year such as 2535 needs 1180 subtracted before you convert it.
How accurate is this converter, and which years does it cover?
It accepts Solar Hijri years 1 to 3000 and Gregorian years 622 to 3621, and it computes leap years with Borkowski's 1996 breaks-table algorithm referenced to mean noon at 52.5 degrees east. That reproduces the civil calendar of the University of Tehran Calendar Center across every year a document is likely to carry. Values outside the band are pulled back to the nearest supported year, and the line under the cards says so. Far-future years stay internally consistent and round-trip correctly, but no algorithm can guarantee the equinox correspondence centuries ahead.
Is this Persian calendar converter free to use?
Yes. It runs in the browser at no cost, converts in both directions, and needs no account. The copy buttons put the converted date, the ISO string or the Iranian short date straight on your clipboard.
Can I put this converter on my own site?
Yes. The embed button below the calculator generates an iframe snippet pointing at /widget/persian-calendar-converter, which renders the converter on its own without the site header or footer. It keeps the same engine, the same month table and the same supported year band.
Sources & References
- Borkowski, K. M. (1996), "The Persian calendar for 3000 years", Earth, Moon, and Planets 74:223–230 — the peer-reviewed 33-year-cycle leap rule, referenced to Tehran mean noon and valid SH −61 to 3178, that this converter implements
- Calendar Center, Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran — the body that officially determines Iran's civil calendar and the equinox instant that fixes Nowruz
- Solar Hijri calendar — month lengths (31×6, 30×5, 29 or 30), the 52.5° E solar-noon year-start rule, the leap-year table, the refutation of Birashk's 2820-year cycle, and Afghanistan's 1922 adoption of the same calendar under zodiac month names
- Iranian calendars — Iran's 1911 and 31 March 1925 adoptions, and the Imperial (Shahanshahi) era: adopted 10 March 1976, abolished 2 September 1978
- Fourmilab Calendar Converter — the reference implementation that separates the astronomical Persian calendar from the algorithmic 2820-year one and warns the latter "is not the calendar in use in Iran"
- International Day of Nowruz — the UN observance fixed at 21 March, marked by around 300 million people, which is what separates it from Iran's civil date of 20 or 21 March
- Pew Research Center — Iranian-American population figures behind this calculator's audience framing