Christ the King Sunday 2026: what it means and where it came from
On November 22, the last Sunday before Advent, the Church year ends by naming Jesus King. Why a pope created the feast in 1925, the readings, and how churches keep it.
The MySavior teamUpdated · 9 min read
And He has a name written on His robe and on His thigh: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
Revelation 19:16 · BSB
And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’
Matthew 25:40 · BSB
Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday of the Church year, the Sunday just before Advent begins. In 2026 it falls on Sunday, November 22, 2026, and the First Sunday of Advent follows a week later, on Sunday, November 29, 2026.
The feast says one simple, enormous thing: Jesus reigns. Not only in heaven, and not only in church on Sunday morning, but over every day of the week, every office and kitchen and hospital ward. By the Church’s standards it is a young feast, barely a hundred years old, born in a decade that badly wanted other kings.
Below: where the feast came from, why it sits in late November, the readings for this year and the next two, how churches keep it, and a prayer for the day. Every verse is quoted from the Berean Standard Bible.
Where the feast came from
Born in 1925, in a world at odds
Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ
Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1925
Pope Pius XI created the feast with an encyclical, Quas Primas, dated December 11, 1925. It closed a Holy Year that also marked sixteen centuries since the Council of Nicaea. Europe was seven years out of the First World War, new nationalisms were asking for total loyalty, and many people had come to treat faith as a private matter with nothing to say about public life.
The line on this card comes from the encyclical’s first paragraph: lasting peace among nations, the Pope argued, would not come while people pushed Christ out of their lives. His answer was a feast rather than another document. Documents, he wrote, reach a few learned readers once; feasts reach everyone, every year. He set it on the last Sunday of October, just before All Saints.
From October to the edge of Advent
Why it moved to the end of November
In 1969 Pope Paul VI reorganized the Roman calendar and moved the feast to the last Sunday of the liturgical year. He gave it a fuller name, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, and the highest rank a feast can have.
The new place says something. Over twelve months the Church walks through Christ’s life, from the manger to the empty tomb and the coming of the Spirit. On the last Sunday it looks at where all of it is heading: Christ reigning when history is finished. A week later Advent opens and the story begins again. Because Advent moves, this Sunday always lands between November 20 and 26. Communities that keep the traditional Latin Mass still celebrate it on the last Sunday of October.
The Gospel in 2026
Matthew 25:40
And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’
Matthew 25:40 · BSB
This year Catholics, and the many Protestant churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, read the same Gospel: Matthew 25:31–46, the sheep and the goats. It is a strange coronation. The King sits on his throne with every nation gathered before him, and his questions are not about rank or doctrine. Did you feed the hungry? Visit the sick? Take in the stranger?
Both groups are surprised. Neither knew it was him. That is the sting and the comfort of this verse: the King of the universe keeps showing up in the people nobody crowns.
The first reading
Ezekiel 34:16
I will seek the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the broken, and strengthen the weak; but the sleek and strong I will destroy. I will shepherd them with justice.’
Ezekiel 34:16 · BSB
Ezekiel spoke to exiles whose kings had fed themselves and let the flock scatter. God’s answer was to take the job back himself, and Psalm 23 follows this reading at Mass. Together they show what kind of king the feast celebrates: one who rules like a good shepherd, going after the lost sheep, binding up the injured one, and refusing to let the strong shove the weak aside.
The Gospel in 2027
John 18:36
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jews. But now My kingdom is not of this realm.”
John 18:36 · BSB
Next year the Gospel moves to Pilate’s headquarters. A Roman governor with soldiers at the door asks a bound prisoner whether he is a king. The answer is not that Jesus’ kingdom has nothing to do with this world, but that it does not get its power the way Pilate’s does. His servants do not fight to keep him. He gives himself away, and still reigns.
The Gospel in 2028
Luke 23:42–43
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Luke 23:42–43 · BSB
In the third year of the cycle the Church reads the crucifixion on its feast of kingship, and that is no accident. Above Jesus hangs the sign Luke records: “THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” It was meant as mockery. Rulers sneer, soldiers jeer, and one of the criminals dying beside him is the only person on the hill who reads the sign correctly.
He asks for very little: only to be remembered. He receives paradise the same day. If you have ever felt you came to faith too late, or with too little to offer, this is your verse.
How Christians pictured him
The King in gold above the altar
Sicily, ItalyMonreale CathedralLong before the feast had a name, Christians pictured Christ as king. The classic image is Christ Pantocrator, a Greek word usually translated “Almighty” or “Ruler of all,” the word Revelation uses for God again and again. His right hand is raised in blessing; his left holds the book of the Gospels.
One of the most striking fills the apse of Monreale Cathedral, just outside Palermo. King William II of Sicily began the church around 1174, and its walls carry some 6,500 square meters of gold mosaic. Above the royal throne in the sanctuary, another mosaic shows Christ himself setting the crown on William’s head: a medieval king saying, in glass and gold, where his crown came from.
How churches keep it
Christ the King, Reign of Christ, Stir-up Sunday
For Catholics it is a solemnity, celebrated in white or gold vestments. Many parishes sing “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” and some close the day with Eucharistic adoration or a procession of the Blessed Sacrament. Pius XI also asked that the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart be renewed on this feast every year.
Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians keep the day too. The Church of England calls it Christ the King, the Sunday next before Advent; Presbyterians and Moravians name it Reign of Christ Sunday; Lutherans in Sweden and Finland know it as Judgment Sunday. In England it is also Stir-up Sunday, after the old Prayer Book collect that begins “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.” Families took the hint: it became the day to make the Christmas pudding, with everyone taking a turn to stir and make a wish.
A cry from Mexico
“¡Viva Cristo Rey!”
The feast was barely a year old when it found its martyrs. In 1926 Mexico’s government began strictly enforcing laws against the Church, and many Catholics rose up against it. Their rallying cry, and the words on their flags, was “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (Long live Christ the King!), and from it they became known as the Cristeros.
Miguel Pro, a young Jesuit priest, went on ministering in secret in Mexico City. On November 23, 1927, he was shot by a firing squad, and no court ever heard his case. He forgave his executioners, stretched out his arms like a cross and called out the same words. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1988.
On your iPhone
Keep the feast in view
Christ the King arrives in a crowded week. In the US it falls four days before Thanksgiving this year, and Advent starts the Sunday after. MySavior’s Christian countdown widget knows its date every year, worked out from the date of Advent, and shows the days left on your Lock Screen or Home Screen, as on the phone below.
The countdown covers 30 feasts. Left on Auto, it follows the nearest feast you have switched on and moves to the next one by itself once November 22 has passed; or you can give a widget a single feast to keep in view. If you would rather see the dates laid out, here is how many days are left until Advent.
Sunday, November 8
9:41
Count down to Christ the King on your Lock ScreenMySavior’s countdown keeps Christ the King, Advent and Christmas in view, along with the other great feasts of the Christian year.
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To say on the feast
A prayer for Christ the King Sunday
Lord Jesus Christ, King of the universe, you reign from a cross and rule by serving. Be king of my mind when I am anxious, of my will when I am stubborn, and of my heart when it wanders. Teach me to find you in the hungry, the sick and the stranger, and to serve you there. And when your kingdom comes in full, keep a place for me. Amen.
The middle lines borrow their order from Pius XI, who wrote that Christ must reign in our minds, our wills and our hearts. Say the prayer on the morning of the feast, and again on the first evening of Advent, when the Church starts waiting for its King all over again.
A small practice for this week
Before Sunday, read Matthew 25:31–46 slowly, once. The King names six things: feeding the hungry, giving a drink to the thirsty, taking in a stranger, clothing someone, caring for the sick and visiting a prisoner. Pick one and do it before the week is out, for someone who can do nothing for you in return, and tell no one. Then, when your church sings to Christ as King on Sunday, you will already know where he can be found on Monday.
Keep the King in view all year
Bible verse and prayer widgets you design yourself, a countdown to the feasts of the year, and a saint for every day.
★ Rated 4.9 on the US App StoreLoved by Christians in 60+ countries8,000+ people every month
Questions
When is Christ the King Sunday 2026?
Christ the King Sunday is Sunday, November 22, 2026. It is always the last Sunday before Advent, so it falls between November 20 and 26. Advent begins the following Sunday, Sunday, November 29, 2026. In 2027, Christ the King falls on Sunday, November 21, 2027.
Why was the feast of Christ the King created?
Pope Pius XI instituted it in his encyclical Quas Primas, dated December 11, 1925. Writing after the First World War, amid rising secularism and nationalism, he wanted a yearly feast to remind Christians, and nations, that Christ’s rule reaches every part of life.
Do Protestants celebrate Christ the King Sunday?
Yes. Many Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches keep the Sunday before Advent as Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday, usually with the same Gospel reading as Catholics.
What Bible readings go with Christ the King?
The Gospel rotates over three years: Matthew 25:31–46, the sheep and the goats, in 2026; John 18:33–37, Jesus before Pilate, in 2027; and Luke 23:35–43, the criminal on the cross, in 2028. Other readings include Ezekiel 34, Daniel 7:13–14 and Colossians 1:12–20. The verses quoted here are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB).
