When Is St. Patrick’s Day 2026?

St. Patrick’s Day is on Tuesday, March 17, 2026. It is not a federal holiday in the United States. However, in Ireland, it is a public holiday when most businesses and schools are closed.

Who Was St. Patrick?

St. Patrick, who lived during the fifth century, is the patron saint of Ireland and its national apostle. Born in Roman Britain, he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave at age 16. He later escaped but returned to Ireland and is credited with spreading Christianity among its people.

In the centuries following Patrick’s death (believed to have been on March 17, 461), the mythology surrounding his life became ever more ingrained in Irish culture. Perhaps the most well-known legend of St. Patrick is that he explained Christianity’s Holy Trinity—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—using the three leaves of a native Irish clover, the shamrock.

Origin of St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day began in Ireland around the ninth or 10th centuries A.D. However, many of the holiday’s traditions actually started in America in the 1600s and 1700s.

Early Religious Observances in Ireland

Since around the ninth or 10th century, people in Ireland have been observing a Roman Catholic feast day honoring St. Patrick on March 17. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place not in Ireland but in North America. Records show that a St. Patrick’s Day parade was held on March 17, 1601, in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, Florida. The parade, and a St. Patrick’s Day celebration a year earlier, were organized by the Spanish colony’s Irish vicar Ricardo Artur.

The First St. Patrick’s Day Parade in America

More than a century later, homesick Irish soldiers serving in the British military marched in New York City on March 17, 1762, to honor the Irish patron saint. Enthusiasm for the St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York City, Chicago and Boston and other early American cities only grew from there.

Over the next decades, Irish patriotism among American immigrants flourished, prompting the rise of so-called Irish aid societies like the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Hibernian Society. Each group held annual parades featuring bagpipes (also used in the Scottish and British armies) and drums.

In 1851, several New York Irish aid societies decided to unite their parades to form one official New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Today, the New York City parade is the world’s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States, with over 150,000 participants. Each year, nearly 3 million people line the 1.75-mile parade route to watch the procession, which takes more than five hours. Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Savannah, Georgia, also celebrate the day with parades involving between 10,000 and 20,000 participants each. In 2020, the New York City parade was one of the first major city events to be canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic; it was replaced by a low-profile ceremonial march in 2021. The parade in New York and others around the country returned in 2022.

The Rise of St. Patrick’s Day in the US

Up until the mid-19th century, most Irish immigrants in the United States were members of the Protestant middle class. That changed when the Great Potato Famine hit Ireland in 1845. Over the next six years, close to 1 million poor and largely uneducated Irish Catholics immigrated to the United States to escape starvation.