The Maya Cholq'ij (Tzolk'in) Explained: How the 260-Day Calendar Works, the 20 Nawales, and Who Keeps It in Guatemala

The Cholq’ij counts 260 days by turning two wheels at once, the numbers 1 to 13 and 20 named days called nawales; both change every day, and a given pairing such as 8 B’atz’ comes round again only after 260 days. Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture says it is one of three Maya calendars still in use, read by spiritual guides known as Ajq’ij.

In short: Cholq’ij (K’iche’) and Tzolk’in (Yucatec) are names for the same 260-day sacred calendar. It runs alongside the 365-day Haab; together they make the 52-year Calendar Round. The 20 nawales run B’atz’, E’, Aj, I’x, Tz’ikin, Ajmaq, No’j, Tijax, Kawoq, Ajpu, Imox, Iq’, Aq’ab’al, K’at, Kan, Keme, Kej, Q’anil, Toj and Tz’i’. Readings are given by Ajq’ijab’, calendar keepers whose practice the 1996 Peace Accords recognised as a cultural right. Sources: the Ministry of Culture’s SIC portal, the Smithsonian’s NMAI and AGN, read 10 November 2026.

How the count works

The Ministry of Culture’s Cholq’ij explainer on its SIC portal describes the calendar as two gears turning together: a numeric cycle from 1 to 13 paired with 20 nawales (days), each with its own name. Both the nawal and the number change every day, and only after 260 days does a combination repeat. Its preferred picture is concentric: the 20 nawales around the outside, the 13 numbers in the centre, multiplying to 20 x 13 = 260.

The NMAI’s Maya Calendar System guide puts it the same way: a full cycle is not complete until each of the 13 numbers has been attached to each of the 20 day names. It adds that Guatemalan Day Keepers say time moves through the calendar like a serpent. Because the number cycle (13) is shorter than the name cycle (20), the numbers start again at 1 while the names carry on, which is how the same name meets a different number each time it returns.

The name says what it does. SIC explains Cholq’ij as a contraction of Cholb’al Q’ij, the ordering of the days, and lists other names in use: Tzolkin, Calendario Sagrado and Calendario Lunar, the last because it is in step with the Moon. The NMAI gives Tzolk’in as the Yucatec Maya name and Chol Q’ij as the K’iche’ one.

Why 260? Both SIC and the NMAI say it matches nine cycles of the Moon and the human gestation period; the NMAI also ties it to the movements of the Sun and the growing cycle of corn. In an NMAI interview, Alonso Méndez says the contemporary Maya still celebrate and maintain the calendar and that it is intimately linked to the agricultural cycle and to human gestation.

A written form survives in a Maya book: SIC points to pages 75 and 76 of the Madrid Codex, where the 20 nawales appear as glyphs with the 13 numerals; the NMAI describes the same codex image as 260 dots marking a path. (The numbers themselves belong to the Maya base-20 system, which the NMAI notes the Long Count also follows; how the dots, bars and shell zero work is on our Maya numbers page.)

The 20 nawales

The order below starts with B’atz’ and follows the Ministry of Culture’s list; the K’iche’ spellings are SIC’s, and the Yucatec equivalents are from the NMAI’s day-name table. The last column gives the two keywords the Embassy of Guatemala in the United States prints for each nawal, as it publishes them.

All read 10 November 2026. Spellings vary between publishers: the NMAI writes E, Ajpu’ and Kame, and the embassy Ix, Ajpu, Ajmaq’ and Kame. The NMAI’s glossary notes that Ajaw, the Yucatec name of the tenth day, means lord in several Mayan languages.

What the keywords are, and what they are not

The NMAI glossary defines a nawal as each day of the Tzolk’in and, in the sacred calendar, as a guardian spirit and an element of a person that links them with the sacred. The embassy calls nawales sacred energies representing natural forces, spiritual principles and aspects of life, and says each day’s nawal influences character, destiny and balance.

The Ministry of Culture adds the caveat that matters before anyone reads a list like the one above as a horoscope. It says there are texts on the meaning of each nawal, transcribed from interviews with the bearers of the knowledge, but that a spiritual guide’s personal accompaniment takes in other essential elements, such as the circumstances in which the reading is asked for and what the person is going through; the written meanings are only a starting point. This page therefore gives no birth-date calculator and no personality profiles.

Who keeps the count: the Ajq’ij

The calendar is read by Ajq’ijab’ (singular Ajq’ij). SIC translates the word roughly as the one who keeps the count of the days and notes that in Spanish they are called guías espirituales (spiritual guides). It says these guides inherit the knowledge according to the nawal of their birth and accompany people who ask for it. The NMAI glossary describes them as specially trained people in the highlands of Guatemala with a calling to become calendar keepers, who use the 260-day calendar as a system of values to orient and guide their communities. It names Komon Tohil, a community organisation of Day Keepers in Zunil, Quetzaltenango.

The NMAI also says printed Chol Q’ij calendars are used daily by many people in the Guatemalan highlands, and the Ministry of Culture publishes a monthly table of each day’s nawal on SIC.

Continuity is part of the story the Ministry tells. SIC says the Cholq’ij was kept by Maya families and communities that never lost the thread of their spirituality through colonisation and up to the internal armed conflict. The Peace Accords of 1996, and in particular the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (AIDIPI), recognised the practice of Maya spirituality as a cultural right, including access to sacred places in protected areas and archaeological zones such as Tikal, Iximché and Kaminal Juyú. SIC adds that the close of the Oxlajuj B’aktun cycle in December 2012 made the calendar’s use more visible and its practice more open. (SIC prints that date as 12 December 2012; the NMAI dates the end of the 13th b’aktun to 21 December 2012.)

If you want to be present at a ceremony, the rules at archaeological sites and how to behave are on our guide to attending a Maya ceremony.

Waqxaqib’ B’atz’: the new year of the 260-day count

The NMAI says a new year is welcomed every time the date 8 B’atz’ (8 Chuwen in Yucatec) comes round, that is every 260 days, and that the K’iche’ Ajq’ijab’ of the Guatemalan highlands mark it with the Waqxaqib’ B’atz’ ceremony, at which new Day Keepers are initiated. The state news agency AGN reported spiritual guides gathering at sacred sites including Kaminal Juyú in Guatemala City on 18 January 2025, and explained that the ceremony starts at dusk on the last day of the cholq’ij and ends the following night. Past and next dates, and how they are worked out, are on our Mayan New Year page; the Guatemala City site is described on our Kaminaljuyú page.

The Haab, the Wayeb and the Calendar Round

The second count the NMAI describes alongside the Cholq’ij is the Haab, the solar count. The NMAI describes 18 months of 20 days (each 20-day month is a uinal) plus a short month of five days, the Wayeb: 18 x 20 + 5 = 365. It notes that Maya communities in the Guatemalan highlands hold special ceremonies during the Wayeb. AGN reported Maya communities celebrating the solar new year, Ab’, of 360 days plus the five-day Wayeb’, on 18 February 2025, in Guatemala City and in towns such as Momostenango and Chichicastenango.

Put a Cholq’ij date and a Haab date together and you get the Calendar Round. Because 260 and 365 are both divisible by 5, the NMAI explains, the same pairing returns only after 5 x 52 x 73 = 18,980 days, which is 52 Haab years; it adds that the Maya hold that a person who reaches 52 attains the special wisdom of an elder. For spans longer than 52 years the ancient Maya used a third system, the Long Count, whose current era began on 11 August 3114 BCE and reached 13.0.0.0.0 on 21 December 2012, according to the NMAI.

Sources

• Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, SIC: Calendario Maya: Cholq’ij, how the count works, the 20 nawales, Ajq’ij, Peace Accords and Madrid Codex (page dated October 2026); read 10 November 2026.
• Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, SIC: Nawales del mes de noviembre 2026, monthly table of day names; read 10 November 2026.
• Smithsonian NMAI: The Maya Calendar System, Tzolk’in, Haab, Calendar Round, Long Count and Table 2 day names; read 10 November 2026.
• Smithsonian NMAI: Living Maya Time glossary, definitions of nawal, Ajq’ij, Day Keeper, Ajaw and Komon Tohil; read 10 November 2026.
• Smithsonian NMAI: Tzolk’in interview transcript, Alonso Méndez; read 10 November 2026.
• Embassy of Guatemala in the United States: Nawales, names, keywords and descriptions; read 10 November 2026.
• AGN: Pueblos originarios celebran el Waqxaqib’ B’atz, el Año Nuevo maya, 19 January 2025; read 10 November 2026.
• AGN: Pueblos celebran la llegada del Año Nuevo maya, 18 February 2025; read 10 November 2026.