Thanksgiving Countdown 2026

Thanksgiving 2026 falls on the fourth Thursday of November, shown above with its exact date. This countdown runs to midnight in your own time zone and shows the days, hours and minutes left until the turkey comes out of the oven.

Why the fourth Thursday? Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863, after a long campaign by the writer Sarah Josepha Hale, and set it on the last Thursday of November. In 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it a week earlier to lengthen the holiday shopping season, a change critics mocked as "Franksgiving". Congress settled the matter in 1941: Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, so it always falls between November 22 and 28.

The first feast. The holiday traces back to the 1621 harvest celebration shared by the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people, which lasted three days.

The day itself. Millions watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, held since 1924, then the NFL's Thanksgiving games, a tradition the Detroit Lions have kept since 1934 and the Dallas Cowboys since 1966. At the White House, the president pardons a turkey, a ceremony made official in 1989.

And the day after. Black Friday opens the holiday shopping season the very next morning. In Canada, Thanksgiving is a different holiday: the second Monday of October.

Put the countdown on the screen for the family, or create your own for your Friendsgiving or your trip home, with a secret message that opens on Thanksgiving Day.