St. Patrick's Day Countdown 2027

St. Patrick's Day falls on 17 March, a fixed date marking the traditional death date of Ireland's patron saint. The countdown above follows your own time zone and runs to midnight, as 17 March 2027 begins.

Patrick was not Irish. He was born in Roman Britain around the late fourth century, taken to Ireland as a slave at sixteen, escaped, and returned years later as a missionary. Almost everything else about him comes from two short texts he wrote himself.

The shamrock story is later. The tale that he used a three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity does not appear in writing until the eighteenth century, more than a thousand years after his death. The snakes he supposedly drove out never existed either: post-glacial Ireland had none.

The parade is an American invention. The first recorded parades were held in the American colonies — Boston in 1737, New York in 1762 — by Irish soldiers and emigrants. Ireland did not hold a large state parade until the twentieth century, and until 1961 Irish pubs were legally closed on 17 March, the day being a religious observance.

Green is also a late arrival. The colour associated with Saint Patrick was originally blue; green took over through its association with Irish nationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Montserrat, and widely marked across the Irish diaspora.