Yearly (January 1st at Midnight)

Use in your stack

# Once a year at midnight January 1st
0 0 1 1 * /usr/local/bin/annual-archive.sh

# Equivalent shortcuts (Linux crontab)
@yearly /usr/local/bin/annual-archive.sh
@annually /usr/local/bin/annual-archive.sh

{ "cron": "0 0 0 1 1 ?", "timezone": "UTC" }

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: annual-archive
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 1 1 *"
  timeZone: "UTC"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: archive
            image: my-image:latest
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

cron(0 0 1 1 ? *)

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 0 1 1 *")
public void newYear() { /* ... */ }

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 1 1 *'

Next runs

Pick a timezone to see when this expression fires next.

Variations

Common use cases

• Annual data archive rotation.
• Calendar-year report generation.
• Rotating long-lived API tokens or credentials on a yearly cadence.
• Resetting year-scoped counters (annual quotas, lifetime-to-date stats, etc.).

Gotchas

• Linux crontab supports `@yearly` and `@annually` as shortcuts for `0 0 1 1 *`. Kubernetes CronJob accepts both. GitHub Actions does not.
• Quartz: `0 0 0 1 1 ?` — six fields with seconds. With the optional year field, you can also pin to a specific year: `0 0 0 1 1 ? 2030`.
• AWS EventBridge: `0 0 1 1 ? *` — the trailing `*` is the year field (any year).
• If your timezone has a DST transition near January 1st (some Southern Hemisphere zones do), pin the timezone explicitly so the job doesn't drift.

Frequently asked questions