Valentine's Day Countdown 2027

Valentine's Day falls on 14 February, a fixed date. The countdown above follows your own time zone and runs to midnight, as 14 February 2027 begins.

Where the day comes from. The Roman calendar recorded several martyrs named Valentine, and the evidence about them is thin. The link with love appears only in the late Middle Ages: it is in Chaucer, at the end of the fourteenth century, that we find the first clear association between Saint Valentine's day and the pairing of birds, and so with lovers. The Church removed the feast from the universal calendar in 1969 for lack of historical certainty; it is still kept locally.

Cards came before flowers. Handwritten notes spread in England during the eighteenth century, and printed cards exploded with the flat-rate postage of the nineteenth. Roses and the restaurant dinner are later additions, largely driven by twentieth-century commerce.

Elsewhere the calendar differs. In Japan and South Korea, 14 February is the day women give chocolate; men answer a month later on 14 March, White Day. In Brazil, lovers' day is 12 June. In Wales, the older Dydd Santes Dwynwen falls on 25 January.