Orthodox Easter in Georgia 2027: Dates, Services, Closures

Easter 2027

2 May

Public holidays

30 Apr-3 May

Midnight liturgy

Sat 1 May

Easter 2028

16 Apr

Easter dates for 2027 and 2028

Georgia's church runs on the Julian calendar, so Orthodox Easter usually falls one to five weeks after the Western date and only occasionally on the same Sunday. In 2027 it is late, 2 May; in 2028 the two calendars coincide on 16 April. The Labour Code lists four Easter days as public holidays: Good Friday (Red Friday in Georgian), Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday and Bright Monday. In 2026 Easter fell on 12 April.

The government sometimes decrees extra days off around the Easter weekend, usually announced only weeks ahead. Our festivals and public holidays calendar has the full year.

What Easter means here

Georgia is not casually Orthodox. Icons hang in taxis, roadside crosses mark the passes, and the church sits inside family life in a way most Western visitors underestimate. Easter turns that up. It comes at the end of a 40-day fast, during which observant Georgians eat no meat, fish, dairy or eggs (which is why so much of the cuisine is vegan by design), and it carries more weight than Christmas for most families.

It is also quieter than you might expect. If nobody had told you, you might not notice it was Easter until you saw a church courtyard full of candles at midnight or a family setting out food at a grave on Monday morning. There are no parades, no chocolate eggs and almost nothing packaged for visitors. What there is: red eggs on wheatgrass in every window, tall paska loaves in every bakery, an overnight service in every church, and a greeting that replaces hello for two days.

Holy Week, day by day

From Sunday morning the greeting is Kriste aghsdga (Christ is risen) and the reply is Cheshmaritad (truly). Use it with your host and the bakery and you will get a smile every time; our phrases guide has the pronunciation.

The midnight service

If you do one Easter-specific thing, make it the Saturday night liturgy. Every church in the country holds it, from Sameba to the smallest village chapel, and anyone may attend whatever they believe. The service begins at midnight. The bells ring for ten to fifteen minutes while everyone lights thin candles from a neighbour's flame and walks three times around the outside of the church in the procession of the cross, chanting as they go. That first half hour is the part worth staying up for. The liturgy then continues inside until two or three in the morning, and leaving early is normal.

Practicalities: buy candles from the church shop during the day on Saturday and bring them without a lighter, since the point is to take the flame from someone else. Stand in the courtyard rather than fighting for a place inside; the service is relayed on speakers, there is air, and you can slip away. Do not take communion unless you are Orthodox. Everything is in Georgian, with a lot of the polyphonic chanting Georgian churches are known for.

Which church to go to

What to wear

Easter is not the weekend to treat church dress as a suggestion. Women: hair covered with a light scarf, shoulders and knees covered, and most Georgian women wear a skirt or dress rather than trousers for this service. Men: long trousers, sleeves, hat off. Darker colours fit in better, and dress warmly, because you will be standing outside after midnight in April or early May. The big churches keep baskets of loan scarves and wrap skirts at the door, but they run out on the busiest night of the year, so bring your own. The full rules are in our church dress code guide.

Red eggs, paska and chakapuli

Three foods mark the weekend. Red eggs are dyed a uniform deep red on Friday, never patterned, and set out on a bed of sprouted wheatgrass (jejili) that families start growing on Palm Sunday. On Sunday morning they are cracked end to end: whoever holds the last unbroken egg wins. Paska is the tall, dense, spiced Easter cake with raisins, in every bakery and supermarket from midweek. The homemade ones are better; Bazari Orbeliani in Tbilisi usually holds a market where home bakers sell theirs in Holy Week. Buy on Friday or Saturday, not Sunday afternoon. Chakapuli is the Easter stew: lamb or veal simmered with unripe green plums, dry white wine and a great deal of tarragon. It belongs to April and May, when the plums and tarragon are fresh, and Kakhetian restaurants in Tbilisi serve it all season. In Guria the Easter pie is a crescent-shaped khachapuri filled with cheese and hard-boiled egg.

The fast ends at the Sunday table, so the meal after the liturgy is the year's biggest supra: meat, wine and no restraint. Alcohol is sold as normal through the weekend, including on Red Friday; many Georgians simply choose not to drink that day. Chocolate eggs are not part of any of this, so if you are travelling with children who expect a hunt, bring the supplies.

What closes and what keeps running

Georgia does not shut down for Easter, but the four public holidays are real. This is what we would plan for, based on the holiday law and on how the 2026 weekend ran.

Bright Monday at the cemetery

The detail visitors remember most is Monday. Families drive to the cemetery, often back in the home village, light candles, roll a red egg three times across the grave (the stone rolled from the tomb), then lay out a small supra at the graveside with a glass of wine poured into the ground for the person buried there. It is not a mournful occasion; the dead are being included in the holiday. The custom hardened under Soviet rule, when churches were shut and the graveyard became the one place a family could mark Easter unbothered.

You can watch. Cemeteries are open and people are generally friendly, and if you are near one on Monday morning you may well be invited to sit down. Ask before you photograph anyone, keep to the paths, and treat it as a family occasion you have been allowed to see rather than an event.

Tbilisi, Mtskheta, Kakheti or Guria

Tbilisi is the easy answer: the biggest services, open restaurants, transport at 3am and a room within walking distance of a church. Mtskheta is the atmospheric one for Saturday night if you sleep there. Kakheti is where Tbilisi families go for the long weekend, which makes Sighnaghi rooms the tightest in the country that week; our spring guide has Sighnaghi guesthouse prices for the 2027 Easter weekend. Guria, in the west, has the one Easter event that looks like a spectacle: lelo burti, a village-against-village ball game with no fixed number of players, played in Shukhuti every Easter Sunday. It is a full-contact folk sport the state listed as intangible heritage in 2014, and a long drive on holiday roads to see it.

At the National Bank's rate on 30 September 2026 (2.6051 GEL to the dollar), 65 GEL is about $25, 153 GEL about $59 and 254 GEL about $98. Those are ordinary spring prices: the Easter weekend is busy with Georgian families rather than foreign tourists, so Tbilisi rooms tighten but do not spike. For the neighbourhoods, see our where-to-stay guide.

A weekend plan

Mistakes

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