Cron every Friday at 5pm (0 17 * * 5): next runs and syntax

What it is used for

Weekly summaries, timesheet reminders, and shutting down non-production environments for the weekend.

Field by field

Field	Value	Matches
Minute	`0`	0
Hour	`17`	17
Day of month	`*`	every value
Month	`*`	every value
Day of week	`5`	Friday

0 17 * * 5 /path/to/job

Next 10 run times

Computed when this page loaded (2026-11-11 02:24 UTC), assuming the scheduler runs in UTC.

#	UTC	Your local time
1	`Fri 2026-11-13 17:00`	-
2	`Fri 2026-11-20 17:00`	-
3	`Fri 2026-11-27 17:00`	-
4	`Fri 2026-12-04 17:00`	-
5	`Fri 2026-12-11 17:00`	-
6	`Fri 2026-12-18 17:00`	-
7	`Fri 2026-12-25 17:00`	-
8	`Fri 2027-01-01 17:00`	-
9	`Fri 2027-01-08 17:00`	-
10	`Fri 2027-01-15 17:00`	-

Things to watch with this schedule

Deploy or migration jobs scheduled on Friday evening run when fewest people are around to fix problems. Consider an earlier weekday for anything risky.

Kubernetes CronJob

Kubernetes uses the same five fields. Set spec.timeZone (stable since Kubernetes 1.27), otherwise the schedule follows the time zone of kube-controller-manager.

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: every-friday-at-5pm
spec:
  schedule: "0 17 * * 5"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 300
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: debian:bookworm-slim
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "/app/run-job.sh"]

GitHub Actions

Workflow schedules use five-field cron in UTC and run only from the default branch. Runs at minute 0 are the most likely to be delayed or dropped when GitHub is busy; an odd minute such as 7 or 23 starts more reliably.

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 17 * * 5'   # UTC

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: ./run-job.sh

systemd timer

The equivalent OnCalendar= value is Fri *-*-* 17:00:00. Check it with systemd-analyze calendar 'Fri *-*-* 17:00:00', which prints the next elapse time. Persistent=true runs a missed job after downtime, which classic cron never does.

[Unit]
Description=Every Friday at 5pm

[Timer]
OnCalendar=Fri *-*-* 17:00:00
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

AWS EventBridge

EventBridge rules take six fields (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week, year) in UTC; EventBridge Scheduler can use a time zone. One of day-of-month and day-of-week must be ?, and day-of-week runs 1-7 from Sunday, so names are used here.

cron(0 17 ? * FRI *)

Quartz Scheduler (Java)

Quartz adds a leading seconds field and needs ? in either day field; days of the week are 1 (SUN) to 7 (SAT).

0 0 17 ? * FRI

Spring's @Scheduled(cron = ...) also uses six fields, but numbers days of the week 0-7 with Sunday as 0 or 7, like Unix cron; the names shown above work in both.

Related schedules

Every Saturday at midnight 0 0 * * 6
Every Monday at midnight 0 0 * * 1
Every Friday at midnight 0 0 * * 5
Every Saturday and Sunday at midnight 0 0 * * 6,0
Every weekday at midnight 0 0 * * 1-5
Every Sunday at 3am 0 3 * * 0
All cron schedules and the field reference
Build a crontab line from this schedule