Ethiopia is the country where the calendar year is still 2018 while most of the world is in 2025.

Why Ethiopia is “in 2018”

  • Ethiopia uses its own calendar called the Ethiopian (or Ge’ez) calendar, which is about seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar used in most of the world.
  • This difference comes mainly from a different calculation of the year of Jesus Christ’s birth compared to Western Christian traditions.

How the Ethiopian calendar works

  • The Ethiopian year has 13 months: 12 months of 30 days and a 13th month (Pagumē) of 5 or 6 days, depending on leap year.
  • The Ethiopian New Year, Enkutatash, falls around September 11 or 12 in the Gregorian calendar, and when it turned 2018 in Ethiopia, much of the rest of the world was already in 2025.

Quick forum-style takeaway

In global timekeeping terms, no country is literally “stuck in the past,” but Ethiopia’s traditional calendar means that when others say 2025, everyday life there is officially dated as 2018.

TL;DR: If you see posts asking “which country is still in 2018,” they are talking about Ethiopia and its unique 13‑month calendar that runs about seven years behind the Gregorian system.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.