About Wait Until

Every countdown is resolved for a reference location — the city whose timezone and regional customs the calculation should follow. That is deliberately separate from where you physically are: if you live abroad but celebrate with family back home, set the reference to home and the numbers match theirs.

Dates come from one of several calendar systems. Fixed Gregorian dates (Christmas, New Year) and rule-based ones (US Thanksgiving, Easter and everything derived from it) are computed exactly. Lunar and lunisolar observances — Hindu festivals, Islamic months, Hebrew dates, Chinese New Year — are read from curated tables verified against authoritative calendars for the years we cover.

Some observances begin at sunset the evening before rather than midnight. For those we compute local sunset from your reference location's coordinates, so the countdown ends when the observance actually starts.

If we don't hold a verified date for a year, we say so instead of guessing. A wrong date is worse than a missing one.

Religious and cultural observance dates legitimately differ between countries, communities and traditions — moon sighting, regional panchang, and local government notifications all play a part. Where that applies we mark the date as varying locally and show the caveat. Treat Wait Until as a well-researched guide, not a religious authority.

Business and tax deadlines are informational only and are not tax, legal or accounting advice. Governments extend and amend due dates regularly, and thresholds change what applies to you. Every deadline links to its official source — check there before you file.

Public holiday observance (whether offices actually close, and whether a holiday shifts when it falls on a weekend) varies by employer and jurisdiction.

Birthdays, anniversaries and your reference location are stored in your browser's local storage on this device. They are not sent to us, and there is no account to create. Clearing your browser data removes them, so keep your own note of anything important.

On a first visit we estimate your location approximately — a coarse, IP-derived area from our edge network or your device's timezone — and never store that estimate. Any city you pick yourself overrides it and is the only location we remember. Precise detection stays strictly opt-in: the coordinates are used once to pick the nearest city and are never stored or transmitted.

If cloud sync is offered later it will be opt-in, and local-only use will remain fully supported.

Wait Until is free. Advertising space is reserved on each page at a fixed size so ads never push content around as you read. Premium features — things like reminders, unlimited saved events and an ad-free view — may be added later; the core countdowns stay free.

Corrections are welcome and taken seriously, especially for regional observances. Tell us the event, the location and the date you expected, and cite the source you trust — we will verify and update the dataset.

Meanwhile, browse the holiday explorer or set up your personal countdowns.