Somewhere in the World
Every day, somewhere in the world, someone is lighting a lamp, throwing coloured powder at a stranger, or staying up to watch the moon do precisely what it did last year. It looks like eight billion people doing wildly different things. It's mostly ten things. We celebrate the sky because it was here first, the earth because it feeds us, and each other because, frankly, that's who we've got. This is a map of all of it, one day at a time: what's happening, why it matters, and who you might want to text about it.
01 — The world in colour
This month, the next two, or just today. Holiday dots wear the colour of what they celebrate, the same ten colours as each day's light (the bigger the dot, the more people). Pink rings are festivals, and green leaves are the planet's own. The ones the whole world keeps sit together in the Pacific, east of China. Tap a country and it lights up gold.
Who's celebrating
Each country is sized by the people celebrating there this month and lit by what they celebrate. Where a country keeps several things, the colours blend.
Different places, the same ten wishes
02 — The calendar
Each day is coloured by what the world celebrated on it. See this week, this month or the whole year, and tap any day for its digest: Ethiopia first, then the United States, then everywhere else, with why each one matters.
03 — Questions
Every number on this page is an estimate, made the same careful way each time, and every fact has a source a click away. The details, for anyone who likes to know how the magic is done.
For each country, the single biggest celebration happening there that day, and how many people keep it. A national holiday counts the people of that country; a religious or cultural celebration counts the share of people who belong to that faith or community; a festival counts the people who go. When a celebration crosses borders and has its own estimate, that figure is shared among its countries by how many keep it in each, so the parts always add up to the number on its card. Then the countries are added together.
Because one person can keep three celebrations on the same day. On 20 October, someone in Delhi might be marking Dussehra and the end of Navratri at once. Taking the biggest celebration per country means nobody is counted twice.
The sky and the planet's own festivals, like a meteor shower or the autumn leaves, belong to everyone, so they don't add to the total. Neither do international days, which are observed rather than celebrated.
Population: the World Bank, 2024. The share of people in each faith or community: estimates based on published research such as the Pew Research Center's. Festival crowds: what the organisers or reliable reports say.
Each celebration adds the colour of what it's about, one of the ten things. Bigger crowds add more colour, softened so a village festival still glows next to a national holiday. The biggest dozen shape the light; everything else joins as a soft wash.
Each day's light is laid out like the map: the Americas on the left, Africa and Europe in the middle, Asia on the right, the sky along the top. Hovering over any part of a day's light says whose colour it is, and where they are.
Most celebrations follow a rule: a fixed date, a day like the second Monday of October, or a day in another calendar (Ethiopian, Hebrew, Chinese or Islamic). Those dates are calculated, so they're right every year. Celebrations announced each year, like many Hindu festivals and Irreecha, come from published sources.
Each entry has a small "Read more" link to its best source: UNESCO, Britannica, the UN, governments and official tourism boards, NASA, museums, universities and major news outlets. Every link has been opened and checked. Cards marked "still being checked" are waiting on a better source.