When is Memorial Day 2027? Monday, May 31 — the last Monday in May and the unofficial start of US summer travel.
Current target date: Monday, May 31, 2027 (Memorial Day). Calendar anchors follow public observance — your school district or country may use a different day.
Memorial Day 2027 is Monday, May 31. The holiday honors US service members who died in service; it also opens the summer travel window with beach weekends and mattress sales. Do not confuse it with Veterans Day in November — different purpose, different date rule.
Memorial Day
Monday, May 31, 2027
"Last Monday in May" is the opposite rule from Labor Day's "first Monday"
May 31, 2027 comes from the last-Monday-in-May rule established by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 (effective 1971). Before that shift, the holiday sat on a fixed date — May 30 — every year regardless of weekday, closer to how Independence Day or Juneteenth still work today.
From a fixed Civil War-era date to a deliberately engineered long weekend
- Post-Civil War era: various towns hold early "Decoration Day" ceremonies honoring the dead; no single agreed founding date.
- 1966: a presidential proclamation and congressional recognition name Waterloo, New York as the official birthplace — a contested but formalized claim.
- 1968/1971: the Uniform Monday Holiday Act moves the observance from fixed May 30 to the last Monday in May, explicitly to create three-day weekends.
- Today: the same floating-Monday rule still governs the May 31, 2027 date on this page.
Confusing this with Veterans Day is the single most common mix-up on this date
Memorial Day (this page, last Monday in May) honors those who died in military service. Veterans Day (November 11, a fixed date that doesn't float to a Monday) honors all who served. Retailers blur both into generic "support the troops" marketing, but the two occasions have different intent and different date rules entirely.
Congress officially named a "birthplace" for this holiday — and historians still argue it's the wrong town
Waterloo, New York holds a 1966 federal recognition as the birthplace of Memorial Day, but multiple other towns across several states have documented ceremonies from the same immediate post-Civil War years, some arguably earlier. It's an unusual case of a national holiday having an official government-endorsed origin story that professional historians don't fully accept as settled.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers about this release date.
1Is Memorial Day always the last Monday in May, or can it be the first?
Last Monday — the opposite pattern from Labor Day's first-Monday-in-September rule. In 2027 that lands on May 31. Mixing up “first” and “last” Monday is a common error between these two Monday-holiday rules.
2Was Memorial Day always on a Monday?
No. Until 1971, the federal observance was fixed on May 30 regardless of weekday, under its earlier name Decoration Day. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved it (and several other holidays) to a floating Monday specifically to create three-day weekends.
3Where did Memorial Day actually start?
Multiple US towns claim the first Decoration Day ceremony in the years just after the Civil War, and the historical record doesn't cleanly settle it. Congress and a presidential proclamation later recognized Waterloo, New York as the official birthplace in 1966, but the claim remains disputed by historians pointing to other towns' earlier ceremonies.
4Is Memorial Day the same as Veterans Day?
No. Memorial Day honors service members who died in service; Veterans Day (November 11, fixed date) honors all who served, living and deceased. Different purpose, different month, different date rule.
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