Linux cal Command Tutorial: Displaying Calendars in the Terminal

This tutorial shows you how to display calendars in the Linux terminal using the cal command. Learn how to display the current month, specific months/years, and entire years.

Open your terminal and type cal, then press Enter:

cal

This will display the current month’s calendar.

If the current date is not highlighted on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Debian systems, use the ncal command as an alternative to the cal command:

ncal

If you want to see a specific month, use -m option:

cal -m jan

To view the entire year, use the -y option:

cal -y

The above command will display the full calendar for the current year. To view the calendar for a specific year, type the year after the -y option:

cal -y 2030

If you want to see a specific month and year, use cal [month] [year]. For example, cal jan 2030 will show january 2026:

cal jan 2030

There’s one more useful option: -3. When you use -3, the Linux cal command will display the current month, the previous month, and the next month.

cal -3