Cron every Thursday at 17:00: the expression, explained, in Docker

The cron expression for “every Thursday at 17:00” is 0 17 * * 4. This page shows what each field does, the next five times it will fire, the mistake most people make with it, and a working Docker example you can paste.

The expression

0 17 * * 4

Field	Value	Meaning
minute	0	exactly 0
hour	17	exactly 17
day of month	*	every day of month
month	*	every month
day of week	4	Thursday only

Next five runs (UTC, from now)

2026-09-24 17:00 UTC
2026-10-01 17:00 UTC
2026-10-08 17:00 UTC
2026-10-15 17:00 UTC
2026-10-22 17:00 UTC

Mistakes people make with this schedule

Filling both day-of-month and day-of-week. In classic cron they combine with OR, so "0 17 1 * 4" runs on the 1st and on every Thursday.
Assuming the server clock is your clock. Cron runs in the machine’s timezone unless the runtime says otherwise; the examples here are UTC.
No lock around a job that might overlap itself, and no alert when it silently stops. That second one is what Supercrontab is for.

Run it in your stack

Linux crontab Laravel WordPress Next.js / Vercel Node.js Python Docker GitHub Actions

# Dockerfile
RUN apk add --no-cache curl
RUN echo '0 17 * * 4 curl -fsS http://app:3000/cron/run' > /etc/crontabs/root
CMD ["crond", "-f", "-l", "2"]

Or skip the sidecar: expose the route and let Supercrontab call it.

Questions

Does 0 17 * * 4 run in my local time?

Only if the scheduler is configured for it. crontab uses the system timezone; Vercel and GitHub Actions always use UTC; Laravel and node-cron take a timezone option. In Supercrontab the timezone is a field on the job.

What if the previous run is still going?

Classic cron starts the next run anyway. Add a lock (flock on Linux, withoutOverlapping() in Laravel) or let Supercrontab skip the tick while the previous request is open.

Is there a shorter way to write this?

No. The five-field form is the shortest portable version.