The xiuhpohualli
The count of the solar year — 365
What it covers
The 365-day solar year: eighteen veintenas of twenty days plus the five nemontemi.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of the xiuhpohualli. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.
In Spanish the entry carries:
- Cómo funciona
- Los cinco días de más
- Dónde se ve
- ¿Dos cuentas, o tres?
- Por qué esta app cuenta dos
- Preguntas que llegan a esta página
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «The xiuhpohualli», The sky and the cycles. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/cycle/xiuhpohualli/
Questions that reach this page
What is the xiuhpohualli?
The Aztec solar year: eighteen veintenas of twenty days, plus the five nemontemi, making 365. It is the calendar of work and of feasts — sowing, harvest, tribute — as against the tonalpohualli, which is the 260-day divinatory count.
How many days were in the Aztec year?
Three hundred and sixty-five. Eighteen twenty-day months make 360, and the five nemontemi close the count. No leap day is documented in the sources, and how the drift against the tropical year was handled is still disputed.
What are the eighteen Aztec months called?
Atlcahualo, Tlacaxipehualiztli, Tozoztontli, Huey Tozoztli, Toxcatl, Etzalcualiztli, Tecuilhuitontli, Huey Tecuilhuitl, Tlaxochimaco, Xocotl Huetzi, Ochpaniztli, Teotleco, Tepeilhuitl, Quecholli, Panquetzaliztli, Atemoztli, TitItl and Izcalli. They are not months in the European sense: each runs twenty days, not thirty.