fortnight This fortnight

Which Fortnight Is It?

The current fortnight of the year, the day within it, and when the next one starts.

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Fortnight Calculator Calculator Add or subtract fortnights from any date, with the conversions to weeks, days and hours. Pay Period Dates Pay dates Enter one known pay date and get every fortnightly pay date for that year — including the 27th when it happens. Fortnight Countdown Countdown How many fortnights until a date — a friendlier unit than a long day count.

A fortnight is fourteen days, and fortnight.now is built around that unit. See which fortnight of the year you are in, do the arithmetic on the fortnight calculator, generate fortnightly pay dates for the year, or count down to a date in fortnights. Free, and running in your browser.

Why fourteen days is a better unit than a month

A fortnight is a whole number of weeks, so it always begins and ends on the same weekday. Months do not, which is why anything recurring — pay, rent, sprints, bin collections, one-to-ones — so often runs fortnightly instead. The catch is that 26 fortnights make 364 days, so the cycle never quite fits a year, which is where the occasional 27th pay period comes from.

The vocabulary matters

"Biweekly" is genuinely ambiguous in American English, meaning either every two weeks or twice a week, and it is often confused with semimonthly, which is a different cycle entirely. "Fortnightly" has exactly one meaning, which is a good reason to prefer it in a contract.

From our guides

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Questions answered Every Other Week Schedules: Which Week Is It This Week? A plain guide to working out whether a fortnightly schedule falls this week, and why ISO week numbers can trip you up. 3 min read Notes The Lunar Fortnight: Paksha and Half a Lunar Month A lunar fortnight is half a synodic month (about 14.77 days), known in the Hindu calendar as a paksha. 3 min read Questions answered The 14-Day Cooling-Off Period: Counting Your Return Window Counting the 14 day cooling off period for online purchases: when it starts, how to count it, and what to do next. 3 min read Notes Two-Week Sprints: Why Agile Teams Work in Fortnights Two-week sprints strike a balance between fast feedback and meeting overhead, making them the most common scrum sprint length. 3 min read Questions answered How to Count Two Weeks' Notice: Start and End Dates A practical guide to counting a two-week notice period, including start and end dates, whether weekends count, and how to check your contract. 4 min read Questions answered Fortnightly Pay to Monthly and Annual: The Right Multiplier Convert fortnightly pay to monthly and annual income accurately using the right multiplier, not a simple times two. 5 min read Notes Sennight and Other Lost Time Words of English English once had a word for seven nights as well as fourteen. Here is what a sennight was, why it vanished, and the other time words that went with it. 5 min read Questions answered What Is a Fortnight? The Fourteen-Day Unit Explained A fortnight is exactly fourteen days. Here is where the word came from, which countries still use it daily, and what the rest of the world says instead. 5 min read

Frequently asked questions

Is fortnight.now free?
Yes — free, no signup, no download.
What is a fortnight?
Exactly fourteen days, or two weeks. The word contracts the Old English for "fourteen nights".
How many fortnights are in a year?
26 complete fortnights make 364 days, leaving one day over in a common year and two in a leap year.
What is the difference between fortnightly and biweekly?
They usually mean the same thing, but "biweekly" is ambiguous in American English and is often confused with semimonthly, which is twice a month rather than every fourteen days.
Why do some years have 27 pay periods?
Because 26 fortnights fall a day or two short of a year. Those leftover days accumulate until an extra pay date lands inside a single calendar year.