The Current Map
Who keeps which calendar, as of August 2026: the Julian churches, the Revised Julian churches, the one church that keeps Pascha with the West, and the mixed situations in the diaspora that produce most of the practical questions. With a note on the recent changes and on the state of the common-date discussion.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox
A Note on Dating and on Method
Calendar practice changes, and two churches have changed it within the last twelve years. Everything below is stated as of August 2026 and should be checked against a jurisdiction’s own published calendar before being relied on. Where a church permits variation among its parishes, that is noted; the permission is often more significant than the official position.
Population figures are deliberately omitted. Orthodox membership statistics are contested everywhere and no reliable, comparable count exists; asserting one would be a false precision. The qualitative point can be made without numbers: the Julian-calendar churches are a minority of the autocephalous churches and, because they include the Russian Church and the Serbian Church, account for a very large share of the world’s Orthodox Christians.
Three Configurations
Every Orthodox church falls into one of three arrangements:
- Julian fixed calendar + Julian Paschalion. The received arrangement, unchanged.
- Revised Julian fixed calendar + Julian Paschalion. The mixed arrangement adopted from 1924 onward. Fixed feasts on the civil (Gregorian) dates; Pascha and the movable cycle unchanged.
- Gregorian fixed calendar + Gregorian Paschalion. One church only.
The Map
Julian throughout
| Church | Notes |
|---|---|
| Patriarchate of Jerusalem | Including the monasteries of the Holy Land |
| Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) | Including ROCOR, without exception |
| Serbian Orthodox Church | |
| Georgian Orthodox Church | |
| Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church | Returned to the Julian calendar in 2014; parishes may keep the new calendar by their own decision |
| Mount Athos | Under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which keeps the Revised Julian |
| Monastery of St Catherine, Sinai | |
| Ukrainian Orthodox Church (under Metropolitan Onufriy) | Predominantly Julian, with parish-level variation |
| Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric |
Revised Julian fixed feasts, Julian Paschalion
| Church | Notes |
|---|---|
| Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople | From 1924; Mount Athos excepted |
| Patriarchate of Alexandria | From 1928 |
| Patriarchate of Antioch | From the 1940s on the standard accounts; Antioch had rejected the 1923 proposal |
| Church of Greece | From March 1924 |
| Church of Cyprus | From 1924 |
| Romanian Orthodox Church | From 1924 |
| Bulgarian Orthodox Church | From 20 December 1968 |
| Church of Albania | |
| Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia | With variation among parishes |
| Orthodox Church in America | With the Diocese of Alaska and a number of parishes on the Julian calendar |
| Orthodox Church of Ukraine | From 1 September 2023, parishes permitted to retain the Julian calendar |
Gregorian throughout
| Church | Notes |
|---|---|
| Orthodox Church of Finland (autonomous, under Constantinople) | The only Orthodox church that keeps Pascha by the Gregorian Paschalion, since the early 1920s; its councils have reaffirmed the practice |
The Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church under Constantinople is sometimes listed with Finland. [Disputed: sources differ on the Estonian Paschal practice — some accounts state that the Constantinopolitan parishes in Estonia formerly kept the Gregorian Paschalion and have since returned to the Orthodox one, while the Estonian Orthodox parishes under Moscow have always kept the Julian Paschalion (“The Date of Orthodox Easter in Finland and Estonia,” johnsanidopoulos.com, locator per METHODOLOGY §2.3). This collection does not resolve the point and does not list Estonia in the table above.]
The Two Recent Changes
Poland, 2014. On 18 March 2014 the Synod of Bishops of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church revoked its own decision of 12 April 1924 and returned to the Julian calendar, effective 15 June 2014, with parishes free to continue on the new calendar (“An unprecedented decision: the Polish Orthodox Church is returning to the old calendar,” OrthoChristian.com, locator). It is the only reversal in the history of the question, and its existence is worth noting for its own sake: the change is not one-way.
Ukraine, 2023. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine moved to the Revised Julian calendar on 1 September 2023, following approval by its Local Council of 27 July 2023, with parishes and monasteries permitted to keep the Julian calendar by decision of the parish assembly (Orthodox Times, orthodoxtimes.com, locator). This is reported here as a calendrical fact. The ecclesiological questions concerning the OCU are live, disputed, and treated elsewhere in this repository; nothing in this collection bears on them (see Orthodoxy: World Orthodoxy).
The Diaspora: Where the Question Is Actually Met
The map above describes churches. Most Orthodox Christians in Western countries meet the question in a form the map does not show, because in a single city one may find:
- ROCOR, Serbian, Georgian, and Moscow Patriarchate parishes on the Julian calendar;
- Greek Archdiocese, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Antiochian parishes on the Revised Julian;
- OCA parishes mostly on the Revised Julian, some on the Julian;
- Antiochian parishes in North America predominantly on the Revised Julian, with some Old Calendar parishes;
— all of them in communion with one another, sometimes within walking distance, keeping the Nativity thirteen days apart. In a mixed marriage or an extended family this is not an abstraction: it is two Christmases, one Nativity Fast running through the other’s feast, and a set of ordinary decisions that have to be made every year (see Pastoral and Practical Guidance).
The compensation, and it is a large one, is Pascha. With the single exception of Finland, every Orthodox Christian on earth keeps Pascha, Holy Week, the Ascension, and Pentecost on the same days. Whatever the divisions of the fixed calendar, the movable year is common.
The Common-Date Discussion, as of August 2026
The question of a common Christian date for Easter has been live for a century and became visibly so again in 2025.
Aleppo, 1997. A World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches consultation proposed retaining the Nicene rule exactly and determining the equinox and full moon by astronomical calculation at the meridian of Jerusalem — a route that would require neither side to adopt the other’s tables (WCC/MECC, Towards a Common Date for Easter, Aleppo, 5–10 March 1997, oikoumene.org). It has not been received by the Orthodox churches.
Chambésy, 1977 and 1982. The Orthodox pre-conciliar process had already examined the question and concluded that the pastoral cost of change would exceed the gain, and that unity in the date of Pascha must be preserved (Ecumenical Patriarchate, “Preparation of a Council: A History,” orthodoxcouncil.org, locator).
2025. Orthodox Pascha and Western Easter fell on the same Sunday, 20 April, in the seventeen-hundredth year from the First Ecumenical Council. The Ecumenical Patriarch marked the anniversary in his Paschal encyclical, and the commemoration culminated in the meeting of Pope Leo XIV and Patriarch Bartholomew in Türkiye in November 2025. The coincidence renewed public discussion of a common date; no Orthodox church has changed its practice in consequence, and the Holy and Great Council of 2016 did not take the question up.
2026. Western Easter fell on 5 April and Orthodox Pascha on 12 April — a one-week difference, and a reminder that the 2025 coincidence was arithmetic, not agreement.
See Also
- Pastoral and Practical Guidance — what to do with all of this
- The Revised Julian Calendar and Its Reception — how the map came to look like this
- How Pascha Is Reckoned — the common Paschalion, and the reform proposals
- Why the Calendar Is Not a Dogma — why a map with two colours is not a map of the Church’s boundaries
- Orthodoxy: The Church Calendar — the hub, with its own list
- The Feasts Across the Orthodox World — the same diversity from the feasts’ side
References
- “An unprecedented decision: the Polish Orthodox Church is returning to the old calendar.” OrthoChristian.com (locator).
- “Orthodox Church of Ukraine changes calendar.” Orthodox Times, orthodoxtimes.com (locator).
- “Finnish Church resolves to continue using Gregorian Paschalion.” OrthoChristian.com (locator).
- “The Date of Orthodox Easter in Finland and Estonia.” johnsanidopoulos.com (locator).
- Ecumenical Patriarchate. “Preparation of a Council: A History.” orthodoxcouncil.org (locator).
- World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches. Towards a Common Date for Easter. Aleppo, 5–10 March 1997. oikoumene.org.
- Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. “The Calendar of the Orthodox Church”; Patsavos, Lewis J., “Dating Pascha in the Orthodox Church.” goarch.org.
- Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Church. Rev. ed. London: Penguin, 1993.