Friday, 13 November 2026 brings the third and last Friday 13th of 2026

One date, several origins

Friday, 13 November 2026 brings the third and last Friday 13th of 2026, the most a single year can hold. The next one falls in 2037. Sources agree the origin of the superstition is murky, and the Guardian notes that the last year with three such dates was 2015. Religious and folk tales carry most of the explanation: Christian tradition links Judas, one of the 13 at the Last Supper, to a betrayal of Jesus on a Friday, and Norse myth casts Loki as an uninvited thirteenth guest whose arrival led to a death. The Guardian also points to the arrest of hundreds of Knights Templar for heresy on Friday 13 October 1307.

Cinema and print culture

The 1980 horror film Friday the 13th made the date a recurring title in American popular culture and was followed by several sequels. The belief was older than the film: a 1916 silent film of the same name was adapted from a 1907 novel by Thomas William Lawson. Kendall R. Phillips, a professor at Syracuse University, pointed to early vaudeville sketches such as "Superstitious Joe" from 1913, which were full of jokes about the date. He said that fixating on the day is a way of pretending people can control a world that cannot be predicted. Superstitions around the date were prominent in 19th-century France, where an 1834 piece in the Revue de Paris reportedly described a Sicilian count who killed his daughter on a Friday the 13th.

Does the date change outcomes

Caroline Smyth, a photographer and celebrant based in Larne, Northern Ireland, says the date rarely comes up for the weddings she is hired for, and she ties that avoidance to superstition.

“I have only worked one Friday 13th wedding in my 14 years in business.”

The Guardian reports that property sales completing on the date have a lower median price and that air fares are cheaper. Its summary lists more motor collisions on the day, but Kylie Sturgess of Murdoch University, writing an opinion piece for RTE.ie, cites a Finnish study that found only a small rise in accidents among women drivers, largely due to anxiety, and follow-up research that found no consistent rise. Air France and Lufthansa have dropped row 13 from their seating plans, according to 20minutes, while Ryanair, EasyJet and Transavia still list it. The Hotel Chateaubriand in Saint-Malo says it has no room 13.

Other countries, other numbers

Italy's feared number is 17, and in Greece, Spain and Mexico the unlucky day is Tuesday 13, according to RTE.ie and La Razón. Spain's proverb warns against marrying or setting sail on a Tuesday 13. In China four is the unlucky number, while Hindu observance includes fasting on Trayodashi, the 13th day of the Hindu month. Deutsche Welle cites a German insurer's survey in which ten in every hundred Germans fear something bad will happen on the day, mostly in southern Germany and among those aged 30 to 39. Finally, 20minutes links the reputation to the attacks on Friday 13 November at Saint-Denis and the Bataclan, which it describes as a more recent reinforcement of the superstition.