Buddhist calendar tool
Switch between Gregorian and Buddhist Era dates for Thai, Lao, Khmer, and Sri Lankan reckonings. Festivals listed with BE equivalents.
Buddhist Era plus 543, year rolls on January 1 (since 1941 reform). Year boundary: January 1.
BE year for this date in Thai tradition: 2569.
20 June 2569 BE
Equivalent CE date: Jun 20, 2026.
Songkran
สงกรานต์ · Solar New Year across mainland Southeast Asia.
Apr 13, 2026 · 2569 BE · 68 days ago
Vesak
วิสาขบูชา · Marks the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana.
May 1, 2026 · 2569 BE · 50 days ago
Asalha Puja
อาสาฬหบูชา · Dhamma Day — commemorates the Buddha's first sermon.
Jul 29, 2026 · 2569 BE · in 39 days
Loy Krathong
ลอยกระทง · Floating-lantern festival on the full moon of the 12th lunar month.
Nov 24, 2026 · 2569 BE · in 157 days
Buddhist Era is the official civil calendar in Thailand and one of two legal calendars in Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. Add in informal use across Myanmar and the Theravada diaspora and you are well past 200 million daily users. It runs in parallel with the Gregorian calendar — bank receipts in Bangkok show both, but newspapers and government forms still default to BE.
The Thai BE offset is 543. The era counts from the traditional date of the Buddha's parinirvana, so 2026 CE maps to 2569 BE. Lao tradition uses the same arithmetic. Khmer and Sri Lankan traditions add one — 2570 BE — because their year rolls earlier in the cycle (Khmer New Year in April, Vesak full moon in May), so the BE count overlaps the Gregorian year differently.
The water-festival weekend (April 13-15) is the conventional Thai date and a public holiday block. Lao Pi Mai runs in the same window. Khmer New Year (Choul Chnam Thmey) is tied to the sun entering Aries — usually April 13 or 14 — and is also when the Khmer BE year increments. In Sri Lanka the Sinhala and Tamil New Year (Aluth Avurudda) lands in the same window but the BE year itself rolls later, on the Vesak full moon in May.