Most British and American Muslims do not slaughter their own qurbani. They pay a charity, and the animal is sacrificed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Indonesia or wherever the meat is most needed. That is a sound practice, and it quietly creates a question the classical books answer only for the case where the animal and its owner stand in the same town: the sacrifice may not come before the Eid prayer — but whose prayer, in whose time zone?
The time differences are large enough to matter. We computed sunrise and sunset for 2027's days of sacrifice in five places animals are commonly sent, and put all of them on a London clock.
The Qurbani 2027 dates
On the Umm al-Qura calendar, 1 Dhul Hijjah 1448 falls on Friday 7 May 2027, which puts Eid al-Adha on Sunday 16 May. The days of sacrifice follow from that. This is a calculated calendar, not a sighting: communities that wait for the crescent, locally or in a particular country, can land a day later, and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the UK do not always agree with Saudi Arabia or with each other. Treat these dates as the expected ones and confirm with your mosque in the week before. Our Eid al-Adha 2027 page carries the same estimate.
The window opens on the 10th, after the Eid prayer. When it closes is a genuine difference between the schools. The Hanafis, Malikis and Hanbalis hold that the days of sacrifice are three — the 10th, 11th and 12th — so the last moment is sunset on the 12th. The Shafi'is add the 13th, the last of the days of tashriq, so for them the window runs to sunset on 19 May. Hanafis and Hanbalis permit slaughter at night within the window, though the Hanafis regard it as disliked; the Malikis, in their well-known position, do not count the nights at all.
| Hijri date | 2027 | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Dhul Qa'dah | Thu 6 May | From sunset, the month may begin |
| 1 Dhul Hijjah | Fri 7 May | Hair and nails rule applies |
| 9 Dhul Hijjah | Sat 15 May | Day of Arafah |
| 10 Dhul Hijjah | Sun 16 May | Eid al-Adha; sacrifice opens after the prayer |
| 12 Dhul Hijjah | Tue 18 May | Last day for the majority, until sunset |
| 13 Dhul Hijjah | Wed 19 May | Last day for the Shafi'is, until sunset |
Whose Eid prayer: the place of the animal or of the owner?
The rule itself is well attested. The Prophet ﷺ said in his Eid sermon that whoever slaughters before the prayer has only slaughtered meat for his family, and it is not a sacrifice; the report from al-Bara' ibn 'Azib is in both al-Bukhari and Muslim. The schools then fill in the edges differently.
The Hanafi school answers the overseas question directly, and it is the clearest position on it. Its standard texts state that the consideration is the place of the slaughter, not the place of the person on whose behalf it is made. If the animal is in a town where Eid is prayed, it may be slaughtered once that town's Eid prayer has been held — whether or not the owner, far away, has prayed. If the animal is in a village with no Eid prayer, the Hanafis allow it from dawn of the 10th. Since the majority of British and South Asian Muslims follow the Hanafi school, this is the answer most of them will be given, and it is the one most qurbani charities work to.
The Shafi'is define the start by time rather than by an event: the window opens once the sun has risen on the 10th and there has been time for two short rak'ahs and two short sermons, whether or not anyone prayed them. The natural reading places that sunrise where the animal is, which gives much the same result as the Hanafi view in practice. The Hanbalis tie it to the prayer in the place of slaughter, or to the lapse of its time where none is held. The Malikis are the strictest on sequence, making the imam's own prayer — and in the classical formulation his own sacrifice — the marker.
A minority of contemporary scholars add a precaution: that the day of Eid should also have begun where the owner is, so the sacrifice does not fall on what is, for the person it belongs to, still the 9th. We have not seen this presented as the settled position of any of the four schools, and we would not want to overstate it; but if you want to be safe on every view, ask your charity whether it holds the slaughter until your own Eid has begun.
What the clocks actually do on 16 May 2027
To make the question concrete we took sunrise on 16 May at each location, added twenty minutes as a conservative stand-in for the earliest Eid prayer, and converted the result to London time (BST). Real Eid prayers in these cities are usually later than that — often by an hour or more — so read the column as the earliest a sacrifice could validly begin, not when it will.
Every one of these animals can be sacrificed before London has even seen the sun. The Jakarta figure is the one that surprises people: a quarter past midnight on Eid morning, London time. For a family in New York the effect is starker still — the Jakarta window opens at 7:14 pm on Saturday 15 May, New York time, the evening before their own Eid.
| Animal in | Earliest start, 16 May | Majority close (12th sunset) | Shafi'i close (13th sunset) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jakarta | 00:14 | 18 May 11:44 | 19 May 11:44 |
| Dhaka | 00:36 | 18 May 13:35 | 19 May 13:35 |
| Lahore | 01:26 | 18 May 14:54 | 19 May 14:54 |
| Karachi | 02:08 | 18 May 15:10 | 19 May 15:11 |
| Mogadishu | 04:09 | 18 May 16:02 | 19 May 16:02 |
| London (at home) | 05:28 | 18 May 20:50 | 19 May 20:51 |
The end of the window matters more than the start
The start is where the fiqh question lives, but the end is where things actually go wrong. A charity that slaughters on the third day is working to its local sunset on the 12th, and in Jakarta that falls at 11:44 on Tuesday morning London time. A donor who pays on Tuesday afternoon, believing they still have until the evening, has missed the Indonesian window by several hours; for a Hanafi, an animal slaughtered after that point is no longer a qurbani.
The same applies in the other direction if your community's Eid is a day later than the country the animal is in. If Pakistan announces Eid on the 17th while Saudi Arabia keeps the 16th, a Pakistani sacrifice is on Pakistan's calendar, and the table shifts by a full day. The same sunrise and sunset arithmetic sits behind our prayer times page, if you want to check a location we have not listed. Charities generally handle this correctly, but it is why a donation made in the last days before Eid is the risky one: pay early, and ask which date the country of slaughter is using.
Hair and nails: from the evening of 6 May
Umm Salamah reported that the Prophet ﷺ said that when the ten days begin and one of you intends to sacrifice, he should not take anything of his hair or his skin (Muslim 1977; other wordings mention nails). On the Umm al-Qura calendar the month begins at sunset on Thursday 6 May 2027 — 20:32 in London — so that is when the restraint starts for someone following that date. If your mosque waits for a local sighting, it may begin a day later; the Islamic calendar page shows how the two reckonings compare.
The Hanbalis take the instruction as a prohibition, the Shafi'is as a strong recommendation whose breach is disliked, and the Hanafis generally do not treat trimming as disliked at all, though many Hanafi teachers still encourage following it. The restraint lasts until your animal is sacrificed, which is exactly what you cannot see when it is on another continent. The practical course is to ask the charity to confirm when the sacrifice is done, or to wait until the window has closed in the country of slaughter — using the table above, that is lunchtime in London on the 12th for most destinations.
Common questions
- What is the Qurbani 2027 date?
- On the Umm al-Qura calendar, Eid al-Adha 2027 is expected on Sunday 16 May, and qurbani can be made from after the Eid prayer that day until sunset on Tuesday 18 May (the majority view) or Wednesday 19 May (the Shafi'i view). A local moon sighting can move all of these by a day.
- Is my qurbani valid if it is done abroad before I pray Eid?
- On the Hanafi position, which states it explicitly, yes: what matters is the Eid prayer in the place where the animal is slaughtered, not where the owner is. The Shafi'i and Hanbali positions lead to much the same result in practice. Some scholars advise, as a precaution, that the owner's own Eid day should also have begun.
- When must I stop cutting my hair and nails for Qurbani 2027?
- From the start of 1 Dhul Hijjah — sunset on Thursday 6 May 2027 on the Umm al-Qura calendar, or a day later if your community follows a local sighting — until your animal has been sacrificed.
- What is the last moment to give qurbani abroad?
- Sunset on the last day of sacrifice in the country of slaughter, not in yours. For an animal in Jakarta in 2027 that is 11:44 London time on 18 May on the majority view. In practice, charities stop taking orders well before this, so pay before Eid.