Mayan Date Today
Today's date in the three intertwined Mayan calendars — the Long Count, the 260-day Tzolkin, and the 365-day Haab — still maintained in parts of Guatemala today.
Gregorian → Mayan converter
Pick any date to see its Long Count, Tzolkin, and Haab.
The three Mayan calendars
The ancient Maya used three interlocking calendar systems simultaneously — a remarkable feat of mathematical culture. Each one tracks time differently, and together they pinpoint any day uniquely in a 52-year "Calendar Round."
1. The Long Count
The Long Count is a continuous count of days since a mythological creation date — 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, corresponding to 11 August 3114 BCE Gregorian. It's written as a five-part number like 13.0.13.9.11 using five time units:
- Kin — 1 day
- Uinal — 20 kins (20 days)
- Tun — 18 uinals (360 days)
- Katun — 20 tuns (7,200 days, about 20 years)
- Baktun — 20 katuns (144,000 days, about 394 years)
The famous 2012 "end of the Mayan calendar" was simply the rollover from Baktun 12 to Baktun 13 — the end of a cycle, not the end of time.
2. The Tzolkin
The Tzolkin (260-day "sacred calendar") combines 20 day-names with 13 numbers. Days cycle through pairings like 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal… repeating every 260 days. Still used today by Maya communities in Guatemala for divination and ceremony.
3. The Haab
The Haab is a 365-day solar calendar of 18 months of 20 days, plus a 5-day "unlucky" month called Uayeb. It does not have leap-year corrections, so it drifts slightly against the true solar year.
The Calendar Round
Any given day has a unique combination of Tzolkin and Haab positions. Because 260 and 365 share no common divisor greater than 5, the same combination only repeats every 18,980 days — almost exactly 52 years. This 52-year "Calendar Round" was the basic unit of long time in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
Reading a Long Count date
A Long Count date like 13.0.13.9.11 encodes the total days since the Maya creation event. Reading from right to left:
- 11 kins — 11 individual days
- 9 uinals — 9 × 20 = 180 more days
- 13 tuns — 13 × 360 = 4,680 more days
- 0 katuns — 0 × 7,200 = 0 more days
- 13 baktuns — 13 × 144,000 = 1,872,000 more days
Total: 1,876,871 days since 11 August 3114 BCE (Julian) — our starting point. That works out to about 5,139 years.
The 2012 phenomenon
On 21 December 2012, the Mayan Long Count rolled over from 12.19.19.17.19 to 13.0.0.0.0 — the start of the 13th baktun. Popular culture interpreted this as the "end of the Mayan calendar," triggering apocalyptic predictions, films, and books. In reality, it was simply a calendar cycle rolling over — like an odometer hitting 100,000 miles. Some Mayan scholars note inscriptions at the Mayan site of Palenque referencing dates as far in the future as the year 4772 CE, making it clear the ancients never thought time was going to end in 2012.
The Tzolkin: 260 days of prophecy
The 260-day sacred calendar combines 13 numbers with 20 day-names to generate unique combinations like 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal… cycling through all 260 pairs before repeating. The mathematical product 13 × 20 = 260 doesn't correspond to any astronomical cycle — theories suggest it may reflect the 9-month human gestation period (~260 days), or the agricultural cycle in the Maya lowlands, or purely ritual convenience.
The Tzolkin is still in active use today. Maya ajq'ijab (daykeepers) in Guatemala's highlands maintain the count without interruption, guiding communities in ceremony, healing, and divination.
Calendar Round: the 52-year cycle
Any given day has a unique combination of Tzolkin position and Haab position. Because 260 and 365 share no common divisor greater than 5, the combination Tzolkin × Haab only repeats every 18,980 days — exactly 52 solar years. This "Calendar Round" was the basic unit of lived time in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: major personal and civic transitions aligned to Calendar Round boundaries, and a 52-year-old's "New Fire" ceremony marked the completion of their first full round.