Nth Weekday of the Month Finder

About this calculator

Many recurring events and public holidays fall on a specific weekday of a specific month rather than a fixed date — Thanksgiving in the US is always the 4th Thursday of November, Memorial Day is always the last Monday of May, and countless recurring meetings follow the same pattern. This tool resolves any "Nth weekday" rule to an exact date instantly. Pick a weekday, an ordinal (1st through 5th, or Last), a month, and a year to see the date.

How to read your results

The result card shows the resolved date in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) alongside the day of the week for confirmation. When a month does not have a 5th occurrence of the chosen weekday — for example, February rarely has a 5th Friday — the calculator tells you so clearly rather than showing a wrong date. The optional recurring view lists the same Nth weekday across the next several years, useful for planning recurring reminders.

Worked example

3rd Thursday of November 2026.

November 2026 starts on a Sunday. The 1st Thursday falls on the 5th, the 2nd on the 12th, and the 3rd on the 19th. The result is 2026-11-19 — US Thanksgiving Day.

Frequently asked questions

Why do some 5th weekdays not exist?

A month has 28–31 days, which is only 4 full weeks plus 0–3 extra days. A given weekday can appear at most 5 times, but only if the month starts or ends on that day or adjacent to it. February (28 days) has exactly 4 of every weekday in non-leap years, so a 5th of anything is impossible. Even in 31-day months, only 3 of the 7 weekdays appear 5 times.

Can I use this for recurring events like team meetings?

Yes. Set the weekday and ordinal that matches your meeting cadence (e.g., "2nd Tuesday"), then step through months manually or use the recurring view to see dates across multiple years at once. Copy the list to a spreadsheet or calendar tool to bulk-add events.

How does this help with holidays like Thanksgiving or Memorial Day?

US Thanksgiving is the 4th Thursday of November; Memorial Day is the last Monday of May; Labor Day is the 1st Monday of September; Canadian Thanksgiving is the 2nd Monday of October. Enter the appropriate rule and year to find the exact date without looking it up on a calendar. The same logic covers similar floating holidays worldwide.

Does the calculator handle leap years?

Yes. The days-in-month calculation uses Date.UTC(year, month, 0), which correctly returns 29 for February in leap years and 28 otherwise, so results are accurate for any year from 1900 to 2200.

How it's calculated

The algorithm finds the day-of-week of the 1st of the target month (using UTC Date arithmetic to avoid timezone edge-cases), then calculates the offset to the first occurrence of the chosen weekday: offset = (target_weekday − first_dow + 7) mod 7. The Nth occurrence lands on day 1 + offset + (N − 1) × 7. If that day exceeds the days in the month, the result is null. For "last", the search works backwards from the final day of the month. Sources: ISO 8601 date standard; timeanddate.com calendar verification.