There will be more ice cream in 2026. More bare feet and blowing dandelions. More iced tea and Frisbees and sandals. More mosquitoes and mowing? No, please, not that, for goodness’ sake, replace it with more hammock naps and fireflies caught after sunset.
Summer is kind of, sort of, just maybe actually going to be longer this year.
Unofficially the summer begins on Memorial Day, when we break out the white clothing, and ends on Labor Day, when we pack it away again. In between: ball games, sand in your shoes, Dad insisting he knows how to light the grill and Mom chasing you down to apply another coat of sunblock.
And Memorial Day falls on the earliest possible day this year: May 25. And Labor Day is on the latest possible day: Sept. 7. It’s a SuperSummer! A Summerganza! A Summerpalooza! (You can do better than us, reader, we know you can.)
Of course, none of this is official. People in the Northeast last week felt like it was already summer as the temperature surged into the 90s (then they had to contend with an unseasonably cool Memorial Day weekend).
The season officially starts this year, astronomically speaking, with the summer solstice on June 21, and ends with the fall equinox on Sept. 22.
That is hardly how we live it.
June 21? We’re already sunburned by then. September 22? We’re mired in geometry tests and the local corn maze. (I swear the exit was somewhere around here.)
But Memorial Day has become the checkpoint to the days of summer.
The act of Congress that established this remembrance of fallen armed service members says that the federal holiday falls on the final Monday of May. This year, because the month begins on a Friday, that’s the startlingly early date of May 25. And when that happens, Labor Day, the first Monday of September, lingers all the way to Sept. 7.
The Long, Hot Summer? Definitely. 500 Days of Summer? This year it’s 106, up from a paltry 99 in 2025. The Endless Summer? We can dream.
This has happened before, most recently in 2020, a year we had other things on our minds beside sand castles.
The frequency of the stretched out summer is complicated. Calendars, like a melting rainbow snow cone, are not neat and pretty. We will have to wait 11 years, until 2037, for the next MegaSummer. The cycle continues, with the next longer summer six years later, then in five years, then six years, then 11 again. Then repeat.
But even in the midst of summer’s joy, the cool nip of fall and the responsibilities it brings is never too far away. Children and their parents will never quite be able to forget the start of the school year, another unofficial moment that feels like season’s end.
With such a stretched-out summer, will kids get to avoid “creeping like snail / unwillingly to school” a little longer this year? And by extension, will parents have to turn over more pages of the calendar before the sweet return of the school bell?
The start of the school year varies around the country. The late Labor Day will feel like true break after weeks of school in some jurisdictions. Then there is New York City, where schools open a bit later, in part because of union contracts. This year, that will be the staggeringly late date of Sept. 10, six days later than 2025.
More Popsicles for everyone!
Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.
The post This Memorial Day Starts a Summer That Is Longer Than Most appeared first on New York Times.
