National pie day

what national day is it today

Today is 3 September 2026, a Thursday. It is not 23 January, so it is not National Pie Day. Unofficial food calendars will still offer you some other dish for 3 September. That offering is not a law, and it is not this page. If you asked “what national day is it today” because you wanted pie, the pie date is in January. You can bake on a Thursday in September. You do not get to rename September.

23 January 2026 was a Friday, and it has already passed. The next National Pie Day is Saturday, 23 January 2027. The date does not move to Monday. There is no substitute weekday, because there is no public holiday to substitute. Bakeries may run a special. They may not. A supermarket pie on 24 January is still pie. It is just a day late for the hashtag.

Charlie Papazian of Boulder, Colorado, declared his birthday, 23 January, National Pie Day in the mid-1970s rather than accept birthday cake. The American Pie Council has promoted 23 January since 1986. That is the chain the food calendar actually uses. It is a promotion with a date, not an act of Congress that closes the post office.

January 23 is pie. March 14 is pi

Pi Day is 14 March, written 3/14 in the American month-day order, for the number π. People eat pie on Pi Day because the homophone is sitting there and because a pie is round. That joke does not move National Pie Day off 23 January. It also does not make 14 March a public holiday. Two calendar gags can share a pastry without sharing a date.

British Pie Week is a separate trade promotion in the United Kingdom, not the American January square. A steak-and-ale pie in March in London does not relocate National Pie Day. If your household already bakes on a Sunday in autumn, you do not need permission from Illinois. You do need not to tell a school that 23 January is a snow day.

National Pie Day: 23 January each year. 2026: Friday 23 January, already past. 2027: Saturday 23 January. Pi Day: 14 March, the number, not the pastry’s official day. Status: unofficial food day, not a civic close. Pi is a ratio. Pie is a dish. Only one of them wants a fork on purpose.

How to keep 23 January about the dish

Bake, buy, or share a pie on that Friday or Saturday. Name the filling, because “pie” is a category, not a flavour. Sweet or savoury both count; the Council’s list has always been broad. If you take a pie to work, take plates. If you post, post on 23 January, not on 14 March with the wrong hashtag, and not on 3 September because you remembered late. A late pie is still a pie. It is just not the date.

Do not confuse the day with a county fair judging, which has its own weekend, or with Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, which has its own Thursday. Do not claim a national day off. Keep the oven on and the bank open. The date is allowed to occupy a pie tin, not a government shutter.