⌛ In Brief · 2026
Hıdırellez in 2026 is celebrated from the evening of Tuesday, May 5, to the afternoon of Wednesday, May 6. It is a fixed folk-calendar date; it is not tied to the lunar cycle.
- 📅 Hıdırellez: evening of May 5 to afternoon of May 6
- 🌗 Cross-quarter day: May 6, 02:35 local time (the astronomical midpoint)
- 🌑 Taurus New Moon: May 16, 23:00 local time (25° Taurus)
- ⭐ Pleiades heliacal rising (Istanbul): around June 5 to 10
There is a 10-day gap between Hıdırellez and the Taurus New Moon. Two distinct astronomical events, two distinct conceptual categories.
Lately, some astrology content in Turkey has claimed that the astrological timing of Hıdırellez is the "new moon in Taurus." This claim is both astronomically false and conceptually unsound. Worse still, it hands the genuine roots of a three-thousand-year-old folk tradition over to the popular-astrology framing of the last three to five years. Even within this region's own astrology, it is a freshly invented notion.
My position here is plain: this claim is the product of a populism that understands nothing of history, has read no astronomy, and has never reflected on the folk calendar. In what follows I will show why I think so.
The Dates Do Not Match
Let us begin with a concrete piece of data.
Hıdırellez is celebrated on a fixed date. The celebrations begin on the evening of May 5 and continue until the afternoon of May 6. This date does not change in the Gregorian calendar; in the Julian calendar it corresponds to April 23, which is the feast of Saint George. The entry on Hıdrellez in the Turkish Religious Foundation (TDV) Encyclopedia of Islam states the fixed-date rule explicitly.
The Taurus New Moon, by contrast, is subject to the lunar cycle. The new moon in Taurus occurs at the moment the Sun and Moon conjoin in the sign of Taurus along the ecliptic. Because the lunar year is roughly 11 days shorter than the solar year, the calendar date of the Taurus New Moon shifts by about 11 days each year. Let us look at the dates of the past twenty years:
| Year | Taurus New Moon Date | Difference from Hıdırellez |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | May 14 | +8 days |
| 2014 | April 29 | −7 days |
| 2016 | May 6 | 0 (coincidence) |
| 2017 | April 26 | −10 days |
| 2020 | April 23 | −13 days |
| 2023 | May 19 | +13 days |
| 2025 | April 27 | −9 days |
| 2026 | May 16 | +10 days |
In a 21-year sample, the Taurus New Moon has fallen on the same day as Hıdırellez only twice; that is roughly 9 percent. The annual difference can reach ten days or even more. This year, in 2026, the Taurus New Moon occurs on May 16 at 23:00 local time; it stands ten days apart from Hıdırellez.
If Hıdırellez were truly the Taurus New Moon, it would not be celebrated on a fixed date. The festival being locked to May 6 is the simplest proof that it is bound not to the lunar cycle but to an entirely different astronomical reference. As someone who has read charts and computed transits for years, I will say it plainly: to miss a calendar error this obvious, either no one looked, or what was seen was ignored, or one has fallen victim to the cheap content production that sanctifies ignorance and to the craving for likes.
The Conceptual Problem Runs Deeper
First of all, we need to grasp the concepts correctly and not confuse them.
The Taurus New Moon is a lunar-calendar, a lunation event. It falls at a particular point of a monthly cycle. Hıdırellez, by contrast, is a solar-calendar event. This day is a cross-quarter day and a point in the annual solar cycle. The two calendars have nothing in common.
Let us recall how the folk calendar divides the year:
- May 6 to November 7: the days of Hızır (summer, 186 days)
- November 8 to May 5: the days of Kasım (winter, 179 days)
This division rests entirely on the Sun's annual motion and on the visibility cycle of the Pleiades star cluster. The Moon has no direct relation to this reckoning. In the folk calendar, the beginning of the days of Hızır is not a new moon; it is a solar threshold independent of the lunar phase.
Astrologically, the link of the sign of Taurus to mid-May lies in the sign's position along the ecliptic, not in the days of Hızır of the folk calendar. Taurus begins when the Sun enters 0° Taurus, which is roughly April 20. Hıdırellez is celebrated when the Sun is at about the 16th degree of Taurus. This degree is not a special turning point in the tradition.
Beneath the claim there usually lies this implicit assumption: "Taurus is an earth sign; it means fertility and nature; Hıdırellez too is a festival of fertility and nature; therefore Hıdırellez is the Taurus New Moon." Of course, this inference is nothing but a fiasco and a piece of cheap content production.
Astrologically, the new year begins with the Sun's entry into the point of 0° Aries, so the very effort to attach Hıdırellez, a cross-quarter day, to the lunar calendar is genuinely a sign of not knowing the concepts properly and a product of cultural degeneration.
Hıdırellez is a festival of fertility, but it is just as much a festival of a threshold of passage. The motif of the threshold is connected not to the new moon but to the Sun's passage from one point to another in its annual cycle. The lunar cycle is monthly; the threshold is seasonal, tied to the solar cycle, and annual.
The True Astronomical Basis of Hıdırellez
It is not enough to refute the claim; one must also set down what is correct.
The first concept: the cross-quarter day
Between the spring equinox (around March 20) and the summer solstice (around June 21), there is a moment when the Sun crosses the exact midpoint along the ecliptic. In astronomy this is called a cross-quarter day. The precise computation for 2026, using NASA data:
- Equinox: March 20, 14:46 UTC
- Solstice: June 21, 08:24 UTC
- Geometric midpoint: May 6, 02:35 local time
The night of Hıdırellez coincides exactly with this astronomical midpoint.
Into the same window fall the Celtic Beltane (around May 1), the Germanic Walpurgisnacht (the night of April 30), the Roman Floralia (April 28 to May 3), and Rikka (May 6), reckoned as the beginning of summer in the traditional Japanese calendar. It is the same astronomical moment called by different names in different cultures.
I have written a long piece on the depth of Beltane: Beltane: The Fires of Bel, the Threshold of Taurus. You can read the Celtic layer of the cross-quarter tradition there.
The second concept: the cycle of the Pleiades star cluster
The entry in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam makes this point: the date of the festival is bound to the visibility cycle of the Pleiades.
Here I must note a nuance. The phrase "the Sun enters the Pleiades" is not quite accurate for today's sky. Because of precession, the stars slowly drift along the zodiac; the rate is roughly 1° per 72 years. Today the ecliptic longitude of Alcyone (the center of the Pleiades cluster) is about 60° 24', that is, 0° 24' at the very start of Taurus. On May 6 the Sun is 14 to 15° west of the Pleiades.
So why does the TDV entry use this phrase? The answer is historical. Around 700 BCE, in the era of Hesiod, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades fell around May 5. In Works and Days, Hesiod gives the heliacal rising of the Pleiades as the time of harvest and their heliacal setting as the time of sowing. Modern archaeoastronomical studies (Sparavigna 2008) confirm this correspondence.
The festival being fixed to May 6 took place in an astronomical era when the heliacal rising of the Pleiades truly did fall at the beginning of May. When we date it, this falls roughly within the range of 1000 BCE to 500 CE. As precession slowly shifted the date forward, the calendar date of the festival stayed fixed. Today the heliacal rising of the Pleiades occurs at the beginning of June; yet the festival shifts neither in the true celestial reference of what it marks nor in its date. This is a historical residue between calendar and sky.
Both concepts are solar- or star-based. Neither has anything to do with the lunar cycle. The Taurus New Moon, once again, has no place in this reckoning.
The Source of the Claim
Where did this false claim come from? From the urge of the astrologers of the last three to five years to produce content and to claim distinction. From their use of approaches that are remote from culture, astronomy, and anthropology, ignorant approaches dressed up as astrological claims in order to deceive the public and draw attention. I have already stated that my position on this matter is very clear.
Why It Matters
This may look as though I am conducting an academic dispute, but the matter has an entirely different dimension.
Hıdırellez is a shared folk tradition of the Anatolian, Balkan, Crimean, Iraqi, Syrian, Caucasian, and Roma communities. It was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017. It is a cultural common ground shared by Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Roma, and various ethnic groups, one that rises above religious boundaries. Historically it draws on the Tammuz cycle of Mesopotamia, the Adonis rituals of the Levant, the Phrygian cult of Attis in Anatolia, and the Adonis festival of the Greek world.
Reducing this depth to the sentence "it is the Taurus New Moon" does three things at once:
First, it degenerates the astrological truth. Concepts such as the festival's true basis (the cross-quarter day and the Pleiades cycle) are forgotten and never learned; in their place comes something that is wrong both as history and as phenomenon.
Second, it erases the historical depth. It reduces a three-thousand-year-old cultural stratum to the popular-astrology framing of the last thirty years. Tammuz, Adonis, Saint George, Hızır-İlyas, Ederlezi, Đurđevdan: this entire rich shared heritage is pulled down to a single monthly lunar event.
Third, it subordinates the folk calendar to popular astrology. The folk calendar is a heritage of thousands of years of observational knowledge; classical astrology is contained within it but does not encompass it. Hıdırellez is the festival of the folk calendar, not of popular astrology.
To stand against this is not merely an academic stance. It is a matter of cultural memory.
Conclusion
Seeing Hıdırellez with the right eye and placing it on its proper ground, we may define it as follows: a festival of the seasonal threshold that occurs at the astronomical midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, at the summer-threshold of the annual cycle of the Pleiades star cluster, whose origins reach back to the dying-and-rising spring gods of Mesopotamia and to the Green Man motif of Anatolia, and which is kept alive in Muslim folk piety as the annual meeting of the prophets Hızır and İlyas. It is celebrated on the fixed Gregorian date of May 6 (Julian April 23). It has no calendrical identity with the Taurus New Moon; from year to year the two dates can differ by as much as ten days.
The specific dates for this year, 2026:
| Event | Date · Time (local) | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Hıdırellez | evening of May 5 to afternoon of May 6 | Fixed folk calendar |
| Cross-quarter day | May 6, 02:35 | Astronomical midpoint (Sun) |
| Taurus New Moon | May 16, 23:00 (25° Taurus) | Lunation (Moon) |
| Pleiades heliacal rising (Istanbul) | around June 5 to 10 | Stellar cycle |
There is a ten-day gap between them. Two distinct astronomical events; two distinct conceptual categories.
As an astrologer and educator who belongs to a tradition, it is my responsibility to state clearly what belongs to the tradition and what does not. Hıdırellez is the festival of the folk calendar. The Taurus New Moon is the intention ritual of modern popular astrology. These two things are not the same; presenting them as if they were is a sign of respect neither for astrology nor for folk tradition.
Bibliography
- Hesiod. Works and Days. Trans. Furkan Akderin. Alfa, 2016.
- Schoener, Johannes. Opusculum Astrologicum. Trans. Robert Hand. Golden Hind Press, 1994.
- Gökalp, Altan. Quand le crible était dans la paille. Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1980.
- Kaçar, Mustafa; Bir, Atilla. Uluğ Bey'in Astronomi Cetvelleri Zîc-i Uluğ Bey. Ministry of Culture Publications, Ankara, 2012.
- Roux, Jean-Paul. Sacred Plants and Animals in Central Asia. Trans. Aykut Kazancıgil, Lale Arslan. Istanbul, Kabalcı, 2005.
- Turkish Religious Foundation (TDV) Encyclopedia of Islam. "Hıdrellez" entry.
- UNESCO. "Spring celebration, Hıdrellez." Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, 2017.
- Schaefer, Bradley E. "Heliacal rise phenomena." Archaeoastronomy 11, supplement to Journal for the History of Astronomy 18 (1987): S19–S33.
- Sparavigna, Amelia Carolina. "The Pleiades: the celestial herd of ancient timekeepers." arXiv:0810.1592, 2008.
This content has been prepared for educational purposes.
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