# Countdown to a Date - Days, Hours and Minutes Until Your Event

Page: https://hirantha.me/tools/countdown-to-date
Part of: Hirantha Sandaruwan Lakshan free tools (https://hirantha.me/tools)
Updated: 2026-10-15

See the days, hours, minutes and seconds until any date or event, count weekdays only, and share it with a link that stores only the name and the date.

This is a free tool that runs in the browser: open the page to use it. File tools process files on the visitor's own device; files are never uploaded or stored. No account, sign-up, payment or watermark.

Type an event name and a date, add a time and time zone if you want, and watch the days, hours, minutes and seconds tick down. After the moment has passed the page shows how long ago it was. You can count weekdays only (Monday to Friday), start from presets such as New Year, Christmas, the next Poya or the next Sri Lankan public holiday, and share the countdown with a link that keeps only the name and the date. Everything runs in your browser.

The event is a moment: the date and time you enter, read in the time zone you choose (your device's zone unless you pick another). The time left is the difference between that moment and now, split into days, hours, minutes and seconds, where a day is 24 hours of real time. The page only reads the clock again each time it redraws, so it stays right in a background tab and after the device sleeps. When the moment has passed, the same figures count up from it.

Calendar days and weekdays are counted on dates, not on hours, in the event's time zone. Calendar days to go is the number of days from today's date to the event date. Weekdays to go counts Monday to Friday days after today, up to and including the event day if that is a weekday; Saturdays and Sundays are skipped and no holiday is removed. After the event, the weekdays since are those after the event day up to and including today. The date arithmetic uses whole day numbers, so leap years are handled and daylight saving cannot add or lose a day.

With only a date, the event is the start of that day, 00:00. A time that clocks skip when they go forward is moved forward, and one that happens twice uses the first, and the page says so. Time zone rules come from your browser's copy of the IANA database and can differ between versions for recent changes, so an event far in the future in a place that might change its rules is an estimate.

The share link looks like #n=Christmas&d=2026-12-25. It stores only the event name and the date after the # sign, which browsers do not send to a server (RFC 3986, checked 2026-10-15). When a link is opened, the page reads at most 400 characters, looks only at n and d, requires a real date from 1583 to 9999, and accepts a name only if it is at most 60 characters of letters (any language), numbers, spaces and a short list of punctuation. The name is shown as plain text and never as HTML. A bad part is ignored and the page says so. The time and zone you set are not in the link, so whoever opens it counts down to the start of that day in their own time zone.

New Year and Christmas are fixed dates, computed as the next 1 January and 25 December after today. The Poya and public holiday presets use the Central Bank of Sri Lanka bank-holiday lists for 2026 and 2027 that this site already holds (cbsl.gov.lk, checked 2026-10-15), so they stop after 2027. There is no preset for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year: its exact moment is decided each year by astrologers, and we do not have it from an almanac, so the page does not guess. The Next public holiday preset can still land on 13 or 14 April, because the Central Bank lists those two days as public holidays; it counts down to the start of that day, not to the New Year moment.

Q: How do I count down to a date?
A: Enter the event name and the date. The page shows the days, hours, minutes and seconds left and updates every second. Add a time and a time zone if the event is not at the start of the day.

Q: How many working days are left until a date?
A: Switch on Count weekdays only. The figure counts Monday to Friday days after today, up to and including the event day if it is a weekday. Public holidays are not removed, so it is a count of weekdays, not of working days after leave and holidays.

Q: Why do the days at the top differ from the calendar days?
A: The top figures are real elapsed time, where a day is 24 hours. At 17:30 in Colombo on 15 October 2026, an event at midnight on 25 December shows 70 days 6 hours 30 minutes, while the calendar figure counts dates and says 71 days.

Q: What does the share link store, and is it safe to open?
A: Only the event name and the date, after the # sign, which is not sent to a server. The page checks the length and characters of what it reads and shows the name as plain text, never as HTML, and ignores any part that is not valid.

Q: Why is there no preset for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year?
A: Its exact moment is fixed each year by astrologers, and we have not confirmed the moment from an official almanac, so we do not offer a date we cannot check. You can type the date yourself once it is announced. The Next public holiday preset can show 13 or 14 April, the two days the Central Bank lists as public holidays, and counts down to the start of that day.

Q: What does the page show after the event has passed?
A: It says the event has passed and counts up the days, hours, minutes and seconds since it, plus the calendar days or weekdays since.

Q: Which time zone is used, and does the countdown change if I travel?
A: Your device's time zone by default, or the one you choose. An event with a fixed zone ends at the same moment wherever you are. With the default, it is the start of that day on your device, so it moves with you when you change your time zone.

Sources: Bank Holidays for 2026 - Central Bank of Sri Lanka, checked 2026-10-15 (https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/about/about-the-bank/bank-holidays-2026); Bank Holidays for 2027 - Central Bank of Sri Lanka, checked 2026-10-15 (https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/about/about-the-bank/bank-holidays-2027); RFC 3986 section 3.5, Fragment - the fragment is handled by the user agent, checked 2026-10-15 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986#section-3.5); Intl.DateTimeFormat timeZone option - MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Intl/DateTimeFormat/DateTimeFormat); IANA Time Zone Database, project page (https://www.iana.org/time-zones)

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