Eid al-Adha 2027

Eid al-Adha 1448 AH is expected to fall around 16 May 2027, on the tenth day of Dhul Hijjah, coinciding with the days of Hajj — the exact date depends on the sighting of the Dhul Hijjah crescent moon.

Eid al-Adha — "the festival of sacrifice" — falls on the tenth of Dhul Hijjah, the final month of the Islamic calendar, and coincides with the days of Hajj even for the vast majority of Muslims who are not themselves performing the pilgrimage that year. It commemorates the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son in obedience to Allah, and Allah's provision of a ram in his son's place — a story shared, with some differences in detail, across the Abrahamic traditions.

The central practice associated with the day is qurbani (or udhiyah) — the sacrifice of an eligible animal (typically a sheep, goat, cow, or camel, depending on region and means), with the meat divided into three roughly equal portions: one for the family performing the sacrifice, one for relatives and friends, and one for those in need. This isn't obligatory on every Muslim individually in every school of thought — its status ranges from strongly recommended to obligatory for those with sufficient means, depending on the school — but it's one of the most widely observed practices of the day regardless of the precise ruling followed.

Unlike Eid al-Fitr, where eating before the prayer is recommended, the Sunnah for Eid al-Adha is to delay eating until after the Eid prayer, ideally breaking one's fast with meat from the qurbani itself once it's been performed. The Eid prayer follows the same basic structure as Eid al-Fitr's — two rakahs with extra takbirs — and is followed, for those performing the sacrifice, by the qurbani itself, typically carried out over the following two or three days as well (the days of Tashreeq), not strictly limited to the day of Eid itself.

For the roughly two million pilgrims performing Hajj that year, the tenth of Dhul Hijjah is also the day of the stoning of the pillars at Mina and the day ihram is exited — meaning Eid al-Adha for pilgrims is experienced as part of a continuous sequence of rites rather than as a single standalone day, distinct from how it's marked by Muslims elsewhere in the world.

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