Leap year
A leap year is a calendar year in which an extra day is added to the Gregorian calendar, which is used by most of the world. A common year has 365 days, but a leap year has 366 days. The extra day, February 29, is added to the month of February. In a common year, February has 28 days, but in a leap year it has 29 days. The extra day, called a leap day, occurs on the same day of the week as the first day of the month, February 1. Additionally, a leap year does not begin and end on the same day of the week, as a common year does.
Leap years are evenly divisible by 4. The most recent leap year was 2020 and the next leap year will be 2024. However, any year that is evenly divided by 100 would not be a leap year unless it is evenly divided by 400. This is why 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years, while 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, and 2300 are common years, even though they are all divisible by 4.
We have leap years because instead of 365 days, the Earth really takes a few minutes less than 365-1/4 days (365.24219) to go completely around the Sun. Without leap years, the seasons would start one day earlier on the calendar every four years. After 360 years, spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere would begin on December 21 (which is when winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere presently begins).
A number of countries use a lunar calendar (based on the Moon, instead of the Sun, like our solar calendar is). They have leap years when they add an extra lunar month. Different calendars add the extra month in different ways. So a year which has 366 days instead of 365 days where the month of February has 29 days is called a leap year.
In a leap year, the corresponding months are January, April, and July, February and August, March and November, and September and December. No month corresponds to May, June, or October.
In the Gregorian calendar, 97 out of every 400 years are leap years. In the outdated Julian calendar, 100 years out of every 400 are leap years. All other years are common years.
Leap Year Media
An image showing which century years are leap years in the Gregorian calendar
The date of the northern summer solstice between 1750 and 2250. The graph shows the date (in GMT) of the northern summer solstice (the moment the sun reaches it northernmost position in the sky, or the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere) through the years.
A Swedish pocket calendar from 2008 showing 29 February
February 1900 calendar showing that 1900 was not a leap year
In the older Roman Missal, feast days falling on or after 24 February are celebrated one day later in a leap year.
Illustrates how the leap year in the Jalaali calendar works. Charts the amount of time from the beginning of the year (12:00am, 1 Farvadin, Tehran time) and the spring equinox for each year from A.D.
Woman capturing man with butterfly-net
Women anxiously awaiting January 1
