Cycles & Seasons
Igbo
A four-day market week · seven weeks a month, thirteen months
An unusually structured calendar built on a four-day market week — Eke, Orie, Afọ, Nkwọ — with seven weeks to a month and thirteen months to the year. The market days coordinate trade between neighboring villages. It is not universally synchronized: communities can sit at different points in the cycle, so any single reckoning is one among several.
—
In UTC at 02:02 on October 27, 2026, this calendar read Eke · 25 Ọnwa 9. The reading above is live, in your own time zone.
At a glance
- Type
- Cyclical — built on a four-day market week
- Origin
- Igbo tradition, southeastern Nigeria
- Year
- 13 months of 28 days, closed by an extra day to meet the solar year
- Months
- 13, of seven market weeks each
- Week
- 4 market days — Eke, Orie, Afọ, Nkwọ
- Counts from
- No running count
- Where it’s used
- Market days and festivals across Igboland; each community keeps its own place in the cycle
- How it’s worked out here
- One reckoning among several, with the year opened on 21 February — communities set their own
Does something here look wrong? Tell us about the Igbo calendar.