Friday the 13th is the most searched term on Google in the United States today — and this one is rarer than most. November 13, 2026 is the third Friday the 13th of the year, after February 13 and March 13, the maximum possible in any calendar year. The last time the February-March-November pattern happened was 2015, and it will not happen again until 2037.
The superstition is a braid of two older fears: the number 13 and the day Friday. Folklore historian Donald Dossey traces the unlucky reputation of 13 to a Norse myth, in which the trickster Loki arrived as the uninvited 13th guest at a dinner of 12 gods in Valhalla and arranged the death of the beloved god Balder. The 13th guest shows up again at the Last Supper, where Judas was the 13th person to arrive.
Templars, composers and a 1907 novel
Friday picked up its own bad press through Christian tradition, since the Crucifixion is remembered on a Friday, and through the arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13, 1307, when King Philip IV of France ordered thousands of the order’s members seized. The two ideas were only stitched together into the Friday-the-13th superstition we know today in the 1800s: there is no record of “Friday” and “13” being paired as unlucky before the 19th century.
One of the earliest English references comes from the composer Gioachino Rossini, who died on Friday, November 13, 1868 — the same date as today, 158 years ago. His biographer noted that Rossini regarded both Fridays and 13 as unlucky. The modern superstition was then popularised by Thomas W. Lawson’s 1907 novel Friday, the Thirteenth, in which a broker uses the myth to set off a Wall Street panic. The fear even has its own tongue-twister of a name: paraskevidekatriaphobia.
Does the date actually bring bad luck?
The evidence says no. A famous 1993 study in the British Medical Journal found a small uptick in traffic-accident hospital admissions on a Friday the 13th in one English region, but larger studies since — including a 2008 Dutch insurance review — have found slightly fewer accidents on the date. A 2019 YouGov poll found that 13 percent of Americans consider Friday the 13th unlucky, and roughly one in ten avoid activities like flying or signing a contract on the day.
Not everywhere fears the date. In much of Latin America, Greece and Spain, the unlucky day is Tuesday the 13th, while in Italy 13 is generally lucky and the date to watch is Friday the 17th. Finland even marks the date as National Accident Day, using it to raise awareness about road safety. So if you are feeling nervous today, the numbers are on your side — and if you are feeling lucky, there is a $555 million Mega Millions draw tonight. See Short adults ordered to the North Pole in viral reel trend and Philadelphia plans record with 1,200 people dressed as pickles.
