No. 2026 is not a leap year — it has 365 days and February has 28 days. The next leap year is 2028.

What is the leap year rule?

A year is a leap year if it is divisible by 4, except years divisible by 100, which are leap years only if they are also divisible by 400. So 2024 and 2000 are leap years, but 1900 and 2100 are not.

When is the next leap year?

After 2026 the next leap year is 2028, followed by 2032 and 2036. Leap years fall every four years, apart from the occasional skipped century year.

Why is 2000 a leap year but 1900 is not?

Both are divisible by 100, so the basic every-four-years rule would skip them. But 2000 is also divisible by 400, which makes it a leap year again. 1900 is not divisible by 400, so it stays a common 365-day year.

Is 2026 a leap year?

Short answer first, then the rule that decides it, the famous century exceptions, a reference list of leap years, and a few things to know about 29 February.

No — 2026 is not a leap year.

2026 has 365 days, and February has 28. The most recent leap year was 2024, and the next one is 2028. Leap years come around every four years, with a rare skip at certain century marks.

The leap year rule

The Gregorian calendar — the one almost everyone uses — decides leap years with a three-step rule:

If the year is divisible by 4, it's a leap year…
…unless it's also divisible by 100, in which case it's not…
…except when it's divisible by 400, in which case it is a leap year after all.

So 2024 (divisible by 4) is a leap year. 2026 is not, because it isn't divisible by 4. 1900 is divisible by 4 and 100 but not 400, so it's skipped. 2000 is divisible by 400, so it stays a leap year. That last clause is why the year 2000 felt unremarkable but was quietly an exception to the exception.

Why leap years exist at all

A year — one trip of the Earth around the Sun — is not a whole number of days. It takes about 365.2422 days. If the calendar simply used 365, it would drift by almost a quarter-day every year, and after a century the seasons would have slipped by around 24 days.

Adding one extra day every four years (29 February) covers most of that quarter-day. But four quarter-days is slightly more than one full day, so the calendar would over-correct. The 100-and-400 century rules trim that overshoot: across every 400-year cycle the Gregorian calendar has exactly 97 leap years, giving an average year of 365.2425 days — within half a minute of the real figure.

Leap years, 2000–2048

Every leap year is marked with a ●. The years in between are common 365-day years.

Year	Days	Type
2000	366	Leap — divisible by 400
2004	366	Leap
2008	366	Leap
2012	366	Leap
2016	366	Leap
2020	366	Leap
2024	366	Leap — most recent
2025	365	Common
2026	365	Common — this year
2027	365	Common
2028	366	Leap — next one
2032	366	Leap
2036	366	Leap
2040	366	Leap
2044	366	Leap
2048	366	Leap

From 2028 onward, leap years run on the simple every-four-years pattern: 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, 2048, and so on. The next century year to break the pattern is 2100, which is not a leap year (divisible by 100 but not 400).

The century catch: 1900, 2100, 2200

Three out of every four century years are not leap years, even though they're divisible by 4. Only the ones divisible by 400 keep their leap day:

1900 — not a leap year (÷100, not ÷400).
2000 — leap year (÷400). The exception people forget.
2100, 2200, 2300 — not leap years.
2400 — leap year (÷400).

This trips up more than people: a famous spreadsheet program once treated 1900 as a leap year by mistake, and that bug was deliberately kept for compatibility — so some software still believes 29 February 1900 existed. It didn't.

About 29 February — the leap day

It only exists in leap years; in common years February ends on the 28th.
People born on 29 February are sometimes called "leaplings." A common convention is to mark the birthday on 28 February or 1 March in non-leap years.
Tradition in some countries holds that 29 February is a day when anyone may propose marriage — a folk custom with no legal weight, but a nice piece of calendar trivia.
A leap year is 366 days, which is 52 weeks and 2 days — one more spare day than a common year. That extra day is part of why some years stretch to a 53rd ISO week.

Check any year yourself

To test a year by hand, work through the rule top to bottom and stop at the first match:

Not divisible by 4? Common year. (2025, 2026, 2027)
Divisible by 4 but not 100? Leap year. (2024, 2028)
Divisible by 100 but not 400? Common year. (1900, 2100)
Divisible by 400? Leap year. (2000, 2400)

For dividing by 4, a quick shortcut works for any year this century: take the last two digits and see if they're a multiple of 4. For 2026 that's 26, which isn't — so 2026 is a common year.