Days in a Leap Year

A leap year has 366 days, one more than a common year. This extra day is added to the calendar to keep it synchronized with the astronomical year or seasonal year.

The Earth takes approximately 365.2422 days to orbit the Sun, not precisely 365 days. To account for this discrepancy, an extra day is added to the shortest month, February, making it 29 days long instead of 28. This occurs roughly every four years. Without leap years, our calendar would gradually fall out of sync with the seasons, causing significant shifts over centuries.

The rules for a leap year in the Gregorian calendar are:

• A year is a leap year if it is evenly divisible by 4.
• However, if a year is evenly divisible by 100, it is NOT a leap year, unless...
• The year is also evenly divisible by 400. In that case, it IS a leap year.

For example, 1900 was not a leap year (divisible by 100 but not 400), but 2000 was a leap year (divisible by 400).

Examples of Recent and Upcoming Leap Years

• 2020
• 2024 (current or most recent)
• 2028
• 2032