What is the cron expression for once a year?

0 0 1 1 *, or @yearly / @annually, runs at midnight on January 1.

Is @annually the same as @yearly?

Yes. crontab(5) defines both as 0 0 1 1 *.

How do I run a cron job every year on a specific date?

Set minute, hour, day of month and month: 0 9 15 3 * runs every March 15 at 09:00.

Can cron run a job once on a specific date and never again?

Not by itself; cron repeats every year. Use at for one-off jobs, or have the job remove itself or check the year.

Cron schedule

Cron every year

To run a cron job once a year, use @yearly (or @annually), which is 0 0 1 1 *: 00:00 on January 1. For another date, set the day and month fields, e.g. 0 9 15 3 * for March 15 at 09:00.

Every year
Expression	`0 0 1 1 *`
Macro	`@yearly`
Runs	1 times in 2027
systemd OnCalendar	`yearly`

How it works

Two fields do the work: day of month 1 and month 1. crontab(5) defines @yearly and @annually as this line, and Kubernetes and Spring accept both names. systemd’s yearly keyword is *-01-01 00:00:00.

A yearly job runs so rarely that the schedule is the easy part. What fails is everything around it: an expired token, a renamed bucket, a server that was decommissioned in March. Make the job runnable on demand and run it by hand once when you set it up.

Midnight on New Year’s is also the least staffed moment of the year. Unless the job must run at 00:00, pick a working day, like 0 10 2 1 * for 10:00 on January 2.

Field-by-field breakdown
Field	Value	Meaning
Minute	`0`	minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour	`0`	hour 0 (12 AM)
Day of month	`1`	day 1
Month	`1`	January
Day of week	`*`	every day of the week

Next runs

Scheduler clock

As on GitHub Actions without timezone, Vercel, Cloudflare and Kubernetes with timeZone "Etc/UTC".

Next run times, computed in your browser from the current time
Run	Your time	UTC
1	Calculating…
2
3
4
5

Ready-to-paste versions

The same schedule for each scheduler, with what differs on each one.

crontab (Linux, macOS, BSD)

crontab -e

# m h dom mon dow  command
0 0 1 1 * /usr/local/bin/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1

cron uses the server’s time zone. On cronie (Fedora, RHEL), a CRON_TZ=Europe/London line above the entry changes the zone for the entries below it.

GitHub Actions

.github/workflows/scheduled.yml

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 1 1 *'
      # timezone: 'America/New_York'  # optional; UTC when omitted
  workflow_dispatch: {}

Runs in UTC unless you set timezone, and only on the default branch. GitHub’s docs warn that scheduled runs can be delayed at busy times and that schedules in public repositories are disabled after 60 days without activity.
The start of every hour is GitHub’s busiest slot. If the exact minute doesn’t matter, move the 0 to something like 17 to get picked up sooner.
With a timezone that observes DST, a time skipped by the spring-forward change advances to the next valid time (the docs’ example: 2:30 AM becomes 3:00 AM).

Kubernetes CronJob

cronjob.yaml

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: scheduled-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 1 1 *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: busybox:1.36
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "date; echo running"]

spec.timeZone is stable since Kubernetes 1.27; without it, the kube-controller-manager’s zone applies. concurrencyPolicy: Forbid skips a run while the previous Job is still active.

Vercel Cron Jobs

vercel.json

{
  "crons": [
    { "path": "/api/cron", "schedule": "0 0 1 1 *" }
  ]
}

Vercel always uses UTC, doesn’t accept names like MON or JAN, and won’t let you set both day of month and day of week.
This fits the Hobby plan, but Hobby precision is per hour: the invocation can land anywhere within the scheduled hour.

Cloudflare Workers

wrangler.toml

[triggers]
crons = ["0 0 1 1 *"]

Cron Triggers run on UTC. Changes can take up to 15 minutes to propagate across Cloudflare’s network.

node-cron (Node.js)

scheduler.js

import cron from 'node-cron';

// 6 fields: the first one (seconds) is optional
cron.schedule('0 0 0 1 1 *', async () => {
  await runJob();
}, { timezone: 'UTC', noOverlap: true });

The schedule lives inside the Node process: if it’s down, nothing runs, and three replicas run the job three times. noOverlap skips a tick while the previous run is still going.

systemd timer

job.timer + job.service

# /etc/systemd/system/job.timer
[Unit]
Description=Run job.service yearly, January 1 at midnight

[Timer]
OnCalendar=yearly
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

# /etc/systemd/system/job.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/job.sh

# systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now job.timer

Check it with systemd-analyze calendar 'yearly', which prints the normalized form and the next elapse. AccuracySec defaults to 1min, so the start can drift by up to a minute.
Persistent=true runs the job at boot if the machine was off at the scheduled time, which plain cron doesn’t do.

Spring @Scheduled and Quartz

Java

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 0 1 1 *", zone = "UTC")
public void runJob() {
    // ...
}

// Quartz CronTrigger:
CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 0 1 1 ?")

In Spring, the first of the 6 fields is seconds; the rest follow standard cron (0 or 7 = Sunday).
In Quartz, one of the two day fields must be ?, and weekdays run 1 = Sunday to 7 = Saturday, which is why the example uses names.

Pitfalls

New Year in UTC vs local

January 1 00:00 UTC is still December 31 in the Americas. A yearly archive that should include all of December 31 local time needs to run later, in the right zone.

February 29 runs every four years

0 0 29 2 * fires only in leap years (2028, 2032, …), and never in 2100, which isn’t a leap year. cron doesn’t shift it to the 28th.

Missed once means missed for a year

If the host is down at the scheduled minute, plain cron skips it until next year. Use systemd Persistent=true or anacron, and alert when the run doesn’t happen.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cron expression for once a year?: 0 0 1 1 *, or @yearly / @annually, runs at midnight on January 1.
Is @annually the same as @yearly?: Yes. crontab(5) defines both as 0 0 1 1 *.
How do I run a cron job every year on a specific date?: Set minute, hour, day of month and month: 0 9 15 3 * runs every March 15 at 09:00.
Can cron run a job once on a specific date and never again?: Not by itself; cron repeats every year. Use at for one-off jobs, or have the job remove itself or check the year.

Last reviewed September 27, 2026 by Arielton Oberek.