Fiscal Quarters and Calendar Quarters

Last reviewed on May 4, 2026

"Q1," "Q2," and "end of quarter" sound like fixed points on the calendar, but they aren't. They're fixed points on whichever fiscal calendar a particular organization uses, and many organizations don't follow the calendar year. This page explains the standard calendar quarters used on the Site's quarterly pages, the most common fiscal-year variants, and how to translate between them.

Calendar quarters

A calendar quarter is three consecutive calendar months. The standard split is:

• Q1 — January, February, March (90 or 91 days, depending on leap year)
• Q2 — April, May, June (91 days)
• Q3 — July, August, September (92 days)
• Q4 — October, November, December (92 days)

The Site's quarterly pages use this calendar split. So Q1 2026 covers January through March 2026.

Fiscal years that aren't the calendar year

A fiscal year is whatever 12-month period an organization uses for accounting. It doesn't have to start on January 1, and there are good reasons for many organizations not to start there.

• US federal government. Fiscal year starts October 1 and ends September 30. "FY 2026" runs Oct 1, 2025 through Sept 30, 2026.
• Many US states. Most state fiscal years start July 1 and end June 30. New York, Texas, and Alabama use different start dates.
• Retail / consumer goods. Many retailers start their fiscal year in late January or early February so that the holiday selling season closes a fiscal quarter and a fiscal year cleanly. This often follows the 4–4–5 or 5–4–4 weekly pattern.
• Education. School-year budgets typically run July 1 to June 30, matching the academic calendar.
• Australia, New Zealand, Japan. Fiscal years commonly start July 1 (Australia, NZ) or April 1 (Japan, UK).

When somebody says "Q1," ask which fiscal year they mean. A US federal Q1 (Oct–Dec) is a calendar Q4. A retailer's Q1 may be Feb–Apr, which crosses calendar Q1 and Q2.

Why split a year into quarters at all?

Quarters are short enough that recent performance is still relevant, long enough that month-by-month noise smooths out. Public companies in most jurisdictions are required to file quarterly reports; most private companies and government agencies use the same cadence so that investors, regulators, and internal management see comparable numbers. Three months is also long enough to absorb a single bad week and still be evaluated fairly — long enough to be meaningful, short enough to be actionable.

Counting working days in a quarter

The Site's quarterly views show three months at a glance and make it easy to count working days. The 2026 calendar quarters break down roughly as:

• Q1 2026 — 65 working days (after MLK Day and Presidents Day).
• Q2 2026 — 64 working days (after Memorial Day).
• Q3 2026 — 65 working days (after Independence Day observed Friday July 3, and Labor Day).
• Q4 2026 — 62 working days (after Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas).

Q4 is reliably the shortest working-day quarter in the US because of how many federal holidays cluster between October and December. See the working days guide for the rules used to count.

Common fiscal-quarter mappings

The table below maps the most common fiscal years to calendar months.

• Calendar year (Jan start): Q1 Jan–Mar, Q2 Apr–Jun, Q3 Jul–Sep, Q4 Oct–Dec.
• US federal (Oct start): Q1 Oct–Dec, Q2 Jan–Mar, Q3 Apr–Jun, Q4 Jul–Sep.
• Most US states (Jul start): Q1 Jul–Sep, Q2 Oct–Dec, Q3 Jan–Mar, Q4 Apr–Jun.
• UK / Japan (Apr start): Q1 Apr–Jun, Q2 Jul–Sep, Q3 Oct–Dec, Q4 Jan–Mar.
• Retail 4–4–5 (Feb start): Q1 Feb–Apr (13 weeks), Q2 May–Jul, Q3 Aug–Oct, Q4 Nov–Jan. Months in this scheme are weeks-based, not calendar-based.

The 4–4–5 retail calendar

Retailers care about week-on-week comparisons (was last weekend better than the same weekend a year ago?), so many of them use a 4–4–5 calendar instead of a calendar-month one. Each fiscal quarter has 13 weeks, broken into a 4-week month, a 4-week month, and a 5-week month. The fiscal year has 52 weeks (364 days) most years and 53 weeks (371 days) in a leap-week year — about every fifth or sixth year.

The big advantage is that quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year comparisons line up exactly: the same days of the week, the same number of weekends, the same Black Friday relative position. The disadvantage is that the fiscal months don't line up with the calendar months, so a "fiscal March" report can include days from calendar February.

How to translate between fiscal and calendar quarters

1. Find the fiscal-year start month for the organization.
2. Number the months 1–12 starting from that month.
3. Group months 1–3 into Q1, 4–6 into Q2, 7–9 into Q3, 10–12 into Q4.
4. To convert "FY 2026 Q3" into a calendar range, look at which calendar months are months 7–9 of the fiscal year and which calendar year they fall in.

Worked example: US federal FY 2026 Q3 = April–June 2026. State (July-start) FY 2026 Q3 = January–March 2026. Same label, two different ranges.

Common mistakes

• Assuming "Q1" means January through March without checking which fiscal year is in use.
• Mixing fiscal Q4 of last year with calendar Q4 of this year in the same report.
• Reporting "year-over-year" growth without aligning the fiscal weeks (especially in 4–4–5 retail calendars where some years have 53 weeks).
• Booking quarterly review meetings at the calendar quarter end when the fiscal quarter ends two weeks later.
• Forgetting that the federal-government Q1 is October through December, the same months that most calendar users call Q4.

Quick checklist

• Calendar Q1–Q4 = Jan–Mar, Apr–Jun, Jul–Sep, Oct–Dec.
• Fiscal quarters depend on the organization's fiscal-year start.
• Always pair a quarter label with its fiscal year (FY 2026 Q3, not just Q3).
• Quarter working-day counts are useful for capacity planning; Q4 is usually the shortest in the US.

Related

• 2026 quarterly calendars — three months on a single page.
• Working days vs calendar days — how to count business days inside a quarter.
• ISO 8601 week numbers — the building block of 4–4–5 retail calendars.