The Orthodox Fasting Calendar: Seasons, Fast Days, and Fast-Free Weeks

Roughly half the days of the Orthodox year are fasting days of one degree or another. Far from gloom, this rhythm of fasting and feasting is the Church's training in freedom — loosening the grip of appetite so that the feasts, when they come, are truly feasts.

The four fasting seasons

1. Great Lent and Holy Week

The longest and most intense fast, preparing for Pascha. It begins on Clean Monday, seven weeks before Pascha, and flows through the forty days of Lent into Lazarus Saturday, Palm Sunday, and Holy Week. Because Pascha is a movable feast, the whole season shifts with it each year.

2. The Apostles' Fast

Begins on the Monday after the Sunday of All Saints (one week after Pentecost) and ends with the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29. Its length varies from year to year — from a few days to several weeks — because its start depends on Pascha while its end is fixed.

3. The Dormition Fast

Two focused weeks, August 1–14, preparing for the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 15 — a fast the faithful keep with particular tenderness for the Mother of God, sweetened midway by the feast of the Transfiguration on August 6, when fish is traditionally allowed.

4. The Nativity Fast

Forty days, November 15 – December 24, preparing for Christmas — sometimes called “Philip's Fast” because it begins the day after the feast of the Apostle Philip. Gentler than Great Lent, with fish permitted on many days early in the season.

Dates above follow the New Calendar. Old Calendar parishes keep the same fasts thirteen civil days later — the Nativity Fast begins November 28, for example. See Old vs. New Calendar.

Weekly and one-day fasts

• Most Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year: Wednesday recalling the betrayal of Christ, Friday His crucifixion.
• The Exaltation of the Cross (September 14) and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (August 29) — strict fast days despite being great feasts.
• The Eve of Theophany (January 5).

Fast-free weeks

The calendar also protects joy. In several weeks of the year no fasting is kept at all, even on Wednesday and Friday: the days following the Nativity (December 25 – January 4), the week after the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, Bright Week after Pascha, and the week after Pentecost.

What “fasting” means — and doesn't

Orthodox fasting is primarily a change of diet, traditionally abstaining from meat, dairy, eggs, and fish, with wine and oil restricted on stricter days and shellfish generally allowed. But the Fathers are unanimous that diet is the scaffolding, not the building: the real fast is from anger, gossip, and indifference, joined to prayer and almsgiving.

An important caution: the full traditional rule is a monastic standard that most laypeople adapt. Children, the elderly, the sick, and expectant mothers are routinely given lighter rules. The universal Orthodox advice applies: set your personal fasting practice with your parish priest or spiritual father, not from a chart on the internet — including this one.

Why the calendar matters so much

Because the fasting year interlocks with the feasting year, you can't keep one without knowing the other. Whether today is a fast day can depend on the day of the week, the season, where Pascha fell, and which feast lands on it. Orthodox households have always solved this with a good calendar within arm's reach.

How the Orthodox Calendar app helps

Orthodox Calendar shows at a glance whether today is a fast day and what is permitted: strict fast, wine and oil, fish, or fast free. It covers Great Lent, the Apostles’, Dormition and Nativity fasts, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the fast-free weeks, following the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese guidelines, and it marks fast days on the month calendar. For your personal rule, talk to your priest.

Related guides

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• Old Calendar vs. New Calendar: Why Orthodox Christmas Can Fall on January 7

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